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THE  NEW  WORLD  AND 

THE  NEW  BOOK 


Stotirrss 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  NINETEENTH  CJCNITEY  CLUB  OE  NEW 
YORK  CITY,  JAN.  15,  1891 


WITH  KINDS  ED  ESSAYS 


THOMAS  WEXTWORTH  HIGGIXSON 

II 


BOSTON 
LEE    AXD    SHEPARD    PUBLISHERS 

1892 


COPYRIGHT,  1891,  BY  THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON 


All  Eights  Reserved 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOO^K 


TYPOGRAPHY  AMU  ELECTROTYPING  BY 
C.  J.  PETERS  &  SON,  BOSTON. 


f/ 


PREFACE 


THE  address  which  forms  the  first  chapter  in 
these  pages  was  given  originally  before  the 
Nineteenth  Century  Club  of  New  York  City 
on  January  15,  1891,  and  was  written  out 
afterward.  Its  title  was  suggested  by  that  of 
a  remarkable  essay  contributed  many  years  ago 
to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  by  my  friend  David 
Atwood  Wasson  and  entitled,  fcfc  The  New 
World  and  the  New  Man.*'  I  am  indebted  to 
the  proprietors  of  the  Century,  the  Independ 
ent,  the  Christian  Union,  and  Harper's  Bazar 
for  permission  to  reprint  such  of  the  remain 
ing  chapters  as  appeared  in  their  respective 
columns. 

Nothing  is  farther  from  the  present  writer's 
wish  than  to  pander  to  any  petty  national  van 
ity,  his  sole  desire  being  to  assist  in  creating  a 
modest  and  reasonable  self-respect.  The  civil 
war  bequeathed  to  us  Americans,  twenty-five 


952429 


vi  PREFACE 

years  ago,  a  great  revival  of  national  feeling ; 
but  this  has  been  followed  in  some  quarters, 
during  the  last  few  years,  by  a  curious  relapse 
into  something  of  the  old  colonial  and  apolo 
getic  attitude ;  enhanced,  no  doubt,  by  the 
vexations  and  humiliations  of  the  long  struggle 
for  international  copyright.  This  is  the  frame 
of  mind  which  is  deprecated  in  this  volume, 
because  it  is  the  last  source  from  which  any 
strong  or  self-reliant  literary  work  can  proceed. 
In  the  words  of  Thoreau,  "  I  do  not  propose  to 
write  an  ode  to  dejection,  but  to  brag  as  lustily 
as  chanticleer  in  the  morning,  standing  on  his 
roost,  if  only  to  wake  my  neighbors  up." 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  October  1, 1891. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.     THE  XEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK    .  1 

II.     AN  AMERICAN  TEMPERAMENT  ....  19 

III.  THE  SHADOW  OF  EUROPE -;7 

IV.  Ox  TAKING  OURSELVES  SERIOUSLY  .    .  35 
V.     A  COSMOPOLITAN  STANDARD      ....  43 

VI.     A  CONTEMPORANEOUS  POSTERITY  ...  51 

VII.     ON  LITERARY  TONICS 62 

VIII.     THE  FEAR  OF  THE  DEAD  LEVEL  ...  70 

IX.     Do  WE  NEED  A  LITERARY  CENTRE?     .  77 

X.     THE  EQUATION  OF  FAME 88 

XI.     CONCERNING  HIGH-WATER  MARKS      .     .  97 

XII.     PERSONAL  IDEALS 106 

XIII.  ON  THE  NEED  OF  A  BACKGROUND    .     .  113  ' 

XIV.  UNNECESSARY  APOLOGIES 1-0 

XV.    THE  PERILS  OF  AMERICAN  HUMOR    .     .  128 

XVI.    ON   THE  PROPOSED   ABOLITION  OF  THE 

PLOT 135  U 

XVII.    AMERICAN  TRANSLATORS 144 

XVIII.     THE  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  OF   A  BOOK 

CATALOGUE 152 

XIX.    TOWN  AND  GOWN 161 

XX.     "  MAKE  THY  OPTION  WHICH  OF  Two"    .  170 
vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

XXI. 

THE  DECLINE  OF  THE  SENTIMENTAL 

.     178" 

XXII. 

CONCERNING  GIANTS      

185 

XXIII. 

WEAPONS  OF  PRECISION    

192 

XXIV. 

THE  TEST  OF  THE  DIME  NOVEL     .     . 

.     198 

XXV. 

THE  TRICK  OF  SELF-DEPRECIATION   . 

.     206 

XXVI. 

THE  LITERARY  PENDULUM 

213 

XXVII. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  AN  AMERICAN    . 

.     221  * 

XXVIII. 

A  WORLD-LITERATURE  . 

228 

THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE 
NEW  BOOK 


[AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  "  NINETEENTH 
CENTURY  CLUB,"  JANUARY  15,  1891.] 


TT  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  man  who  has, 
among  all  American  authors,  made  the  most 
daring  and  almost  revolutionary  claims  in 
behalf  of  American  literature  should  yet  have 
"been,  among  all  these  authors,  the  most  equable 
in  temperament  and  the  most  cosmopolitan  in 
training. 

Washington  Irving  was,  as  one  may  say, 
born  a  citizen  of  the  world,  for  he  was  born 
in  New  York  City.  He  was  not  a  rustic  nor 
a  Puritan,  nor  even,  in  the  American  sense,  a 
Yankee.  He  spent  twenty -one  years  of  his  life 
in  foreign  countries.  He  was  mistaken  in 
England  for  an  English  writer.  He  was 
accepted  as  an  adopted  Spaniard  in  Spain.  He 
i 


%        THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

diecj  before  the;  outbreak  of  the  great  Civil 
War,  which'  did  so^much  to  convince  us,  for  a 
time  at  least,  that  we  were  a  nation.  Yet  it 
was  Washington  Irving  who  wrote  to  John 
Lothrop  Motley,  in  1857,  two  years  before  his 
own  death :  — 

"  You  are  properly  sensible  of  the  high  call 
ing  of  the  American  press,  that  rising  tribunal 
before  which  the  history  of  all  nations  is  to  be 
revised  and  rewritten,  and  the  judgment  of  past 
ages  to  be  corrected  or  confirmed."  l 

The  utmost  claim  of  the  most  impassioned 
Fourth  of  July  orator  has  never  involved  any 
declaration  of  literary  independence  to  be  com 
pared  with  this  deliberate  utterance  of  the 
placid  and  world-experienced  Irving.  It  was 
the  fashion  of  earlier  critics  to  pity  him  for  hav 
ing  been  born  into  a  country  without  a  past. 
This  passage  showed  him  to  have  rejoiced  in 
being  born  into  a  country  with  a  future.  His 
"  broad  and  eclectic  genius,"  as  Warner  well 
calls  it,  was  surely  not  given  to  bragging  or 
to  vagueness.  He  must  have  meant  something 
by  this  daring  statement.  What  did  he  mean  ? 

i  July  17,  1857.     Motley  Correspondence,  i.  203. 


THE    NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   XEW    BOOK      3 

There  are  some  things  which  it  is  very  cer 
tain  that  he  did  not  mean.  He  certainly  did 
not  accept  the  Matthew  Arnold  attitude,  that  to 
talk  of  a  distinctive  American  press  at  all  is  an 
absurdity.  Arnold  finds  material  for  profound 
ridicule  in  the  fact  that  there  exists  a  "  Primer 
of  American  Literature ;  "  this  poor  little  Cin 
derella,  cut  off  from  all  schooling,  must  not 
even  have  a  primer  of  her  own.  Irving  cer 
tainly  did  not  assume  the  Goldwin  Smith  atti 
tude,  that  this  nation  is  itself  but  a  schism,  and 
should  be  viewed  accordingly :  as  if  one  should 
talk  of  there  being  only  a  schism  between  an 
oak-tree  and  its  seedling,  and  should  try  to 
correct  the  unhappy  separation  by  trowel  and 
gardener's  wax.  He  certainly  did  not  accept 
the  theory  sometimes  so  earnestly  advocated 
among  us,  of  a  "  cosmopolitan  tribunal,"  which 
always  turns  out  to  mean  a  tribunal  where  all 
other  nations  are  to  be  admitted  to  the  jury-box, 
while  America  is  to  get  no  farther  than  the 
prisoners'  dock.  Irving  would  have  made  as 
short  work  with  such  a  cosmopolitan  tribunal 
as  did  Alice  in  Wonderland  with  the  jury-box 
of  small  quadrupeds,  when  she  refused  to  obey 


4      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND  THE   NEW   BOOK 

the  king's  order  that  all  persons  over  a  mile 
high  should  leave  the  court-room.  In  truth, 
the  tone  of  Irving's  remark  carries  us  back,  by 
its  audacious  self-reliance,  to  the  answer  said  to 
have  been  given  by  the  Delphic  oracle  to 
Cicero  in  his  youth.  It  told  him,  according 
to  Plutarch,  to  live  for  himself,  and  not  to  take 
the  opinions  of  others  for  his  guide ;  and  the 
German  Niebuhr  thinks  that  "  if  the  answer  was 
really  given,  it  might  well  tempt  us  to  believe  in 
the  actual  inspiration  of  the  priestess."  1 

At  any  rate,  Irving  must  have  meant  some 
thing  by  the  remark.  What  could  he  have 
meant?  What  is  this  touchstone  that  the 
American  press  must  apply  to  the  history  and 
the  thought  of  the  world?  The  touchstone,  I 
should  unhesitatingly  reply,  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  ;  or  rather,  perhaps,  of  those 
five  opening  words  into  which  the  essence  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  was  concentrated ; 
the  five  words  within  which,  as  Lincoln  said, 
Jefferson  embodied  an  eternal  truth.  "  All 
men  are  created  equal;" — that  is,  equally 
men,  and  each  entitled  to  be  counted  and  con 
sidered  as  an  individual. 

i  Hist,  of  Rome,  tr.  by  Schmitz,  v.  35. 


THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK      5 

From  this  simple  assumption  flowed  all  that 
is  distinctive  in  American  society.  From  it 
resulted,  as  a  political  inference,  universal  suf 
frage  ;  that  is,  a  suffrage  constantly  tending  to 
be  universal,  although  it  still  leaves  out  one- 
half  the  human  race.  This  universal  suffrage 
is  inevitably  based  on  the  doctrine  of  human 
equality,  as  further  interpreted  by  Franklin's 
remark  that  the  poor  man  has  an  equal  right  to 
the  suffrage  with  the  rich  man,  *•  and  more 
need,"  because  he  has  fewer  ways  in  which  to 
protect  himself.  But  it  is  not  true,  as  even 
such  acute  European  observers  as  M.  Scherer 
and  Sir  Henry  Maine  assume,  that  "  democ 
racy  is  but  a  form  of  government;  "  for  democ 
racy  has  just  as  distinct  a  place  in  society, 
and,  above  all,  in  the  realm  of  literature.  The 
touchstone  there  applied  is  just  the  same,  and 
it  consists  in  the  essential  dignity  and  value  of 
the  individual  man.  The  distinctive  attitude 
of  the  American  press  must  lie,  if  anywhere,  in 
its  recognition  of  this  individual  importance 
and  worth. 

The  five  words  of  Jefferson  —  words  which 
Matthew  Arnold  pronounced  "  not  solid,"  thus 


6      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

prove  themselves  solid  enough  to  sustain  not 
merely  the  government  of  sixty-three  million 
people,  but  their  literature.  Instead  of  avoid 
ing,  with  Goethe,  the  common,  das  Gremeinde, 
American  literature  must  freely  seek  the  com 
mon  ;  its  fiction  must  record  not  queens  and 
Cleopatras  alone,  but  the  emotion  in  the  heart 
of  the  schoolgirl  and  the  sempstress  ;  its  his 
tory  must  record,  not  great  generals  alone,  but 
the  nameless  boys  whose  graves  people  with  un 
dying  memories  every  soldiers'  cemetery  from 
Arlington  to  Chattanooga. 

And  Motley  the  pupil  was  not  unworthy  of 
Irving  from  whom  the  suggestion  came.  His 
"  Dutch  Republic  "  was  written  in  this  Amer 
ican  spirit.  William  the  Silent  remains  in  our 
memory  as  no  more  essentially  a  hero  than  John 
Haring,  who  held  single-handed  his  submerged 
dike  against  an  army ;  and  Philip  of  Burgundy 
and  his  knights  of  the  Golden  Fleece  are 
painted  as  far  less  important  than  John  Coster, 
the  Antwerp  apothecary,  printing  his  little 
grammar  with  movable  types.  Motley  wrote 
from  England,  in  the  midst  of  an  intoxicating 
social  success,  that  he  never  should  wish  America 


THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK   < 

"to  be  Anglicized  in  the  aristocratic  sense"  of 
the  term ; 1  and  he  described  the  beautiful 
English  country-seats  as  "  paradises  very  per 
verting  to  the  moral  and  politico-economical 
sense,"  and  sure  to  "pass  away,  one  of  these 
centuries,  in  the  general  progress  of  humanity."  2 
And  he  afterwards  said  the  profoundest  thing 
ever  uttered  in  regard  to  our  Civil  War,  when 
he  said  that  it  was  not,  in  the  ordinary  sense,  "  a 
military  war,"  but  a  contest  of  two  principles.3 
Wendell  Phillips  once  told  me  that  as  the  anti- 
slavery  contest  made  him  an  American,  so 
Europe  made  Motley  one;  and  when  the  two 
young  aristocrats  met  after  years  of  absence, 
they  both  found  that  they  had  thus  experienced 
religion. 

When  we  pass  to  other  great  American 
authors,  we  see  that  Emerson  lifted  his  voice 
and  spoke  even  to  the  humblest  of  the  people 
of  the  intrinsic  dignity  of  man  :  — 

God  said,  I  am  tired  of  kings, 

I  suffer  them  no  more  ; 
Up  to  my  ear  each  morning  brings 

The  outrage  of  the  poor. 

i  Corresp.  ii.  294.  2  jbidt  y.  280.         3  fbid.  ii.  82. 


8      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

I  will  have  never  a  noble, 

No  lineage  counted  great; 
Fishers  and  choppers  and  ploughmen 

Shall  constitute  a  State. 

To-day  unbind  the  captive, 

So  only  are  ye  unbound  : 
Lift  up  a  people  from  the  dust, 

Trump  of  their  freedom,  sound  ! 

Pay  ransom  to  the  owner, 

And  fill  the  bag  to  the  brim  : 
Who  is  the  owner  ?    The  slave  is  owner, 

And  ever  was.     Pay  him. 

That  poem  was  not  written  for  a  few  culti 
vated  people  only.  I  heard  it  read  to  an  armed 
regiment  of  freed  slaves,  standing  silent  with 
dusky  faces,  with  the  solemn  arches  of  the  live 
oaks  above  them,  each  tree  draped  with  long 
festoons  of  gray  moss  across  its  hundred  feet  of 
shade.  And  never  reader  had  an  audience  more 
serious,  more  thoughtful.  The  words  which  to 
others  are  literature,  to  them  were  life. 

And  all  of  that  early  transcendental  school 
which  did  so  much  to  emancipate  and  national 
ize  American  literature,  did  it  by  recognizing 
this  same  fact,  From  the  depth  of  their  so-called 
idealism  they  recognized  the  infinite  value  of 


THE   NEW    WOKLD    AXD    THE    NEW    BOOK      9 

the  individual  man.  Thoreau,  who  has  been  so 
incorrectly  and  even  cruelly  described  as  a  man 
who  spurned  his  fellows,  wrote  that  noble 
sentence,  forever  refuting  such  critics.  ••  What  is 
nature,  without  a  human  life  passing  within 
her?  Many  joys  and  many  sorrows  are  the 
lights  and  shadows  in  which  she  shines  most 
beautiful."  Hawthorne  came  nearest  to  a 
portrayal  of  himself  in  that  exquisite  prose- 
poem  of  "  The  Threefold  Destiny/'  in  which  the 
world-weary  man  returns  to  his  native  village 
and  finds  all  his  early  dreams  fulfilled  in  the  life 
beside  his  own  hearthstone.  Margaret  Fuller 
Ossoli  wrote  the  profoundest  phrase  of  criticism 
which  has  yet  proceeded  from  any  American 
critic,  when  she  said  that  in  a  work  of  fiction 
we  need  to  hear  the  excuses  that  men  make  to 
themselves  for  their  worthlessness. 

And  now  that  this  early  ideal  movement  has 
passed  by,  the  far  wider  movement  which  is 
establishing  American  fiction,  not  in  one  local 
ity  alone,  but  on  a  field  broad  as  the  continent, 
unconsciously  recognizes  this  one  principle,  — 
the  essential  dignity  and  worth  of  the  individ 
ual  man.  This  is  what  enables  it  to  dispense 


10      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

with  the  toy  of  royalty  and  the  mechanism  of 
separate  classes,  and  to  reach  human  nature 
itself.  When  we  look  at  the  masters  of  English 
fiction,  Scott  and  Jane  Austen,  we  notice  that 
in  scarcely  one  of  their  novels  does  one  person 
ever  swerve  on  the  closing  page  from  the  precise 
social  position  he  has  held  from  the  beginning. 
Society  in  their  hands  is  fixed,  not  fluid.  Of 
course,  there  are  a  few  concealed  heirs,  a  few 
revealed  strawberry  leaves,  but  never  any  essen 
tial  change.  I  can  recall  no  real  social  promo 
tion  in  all  the  Waverley  novels  except  where 
Halbert  Glendinning  weds  the  maid  of  Avenel, 
and  there  the  tutelary  genius  disappears 
singing,  — 

"  The  churl  is  lord,  the  maid  is  bride,"  — 

and  it  proved  necessary  for  Scott  to  write  a 
sequel,  explaining  that  the  marriage  was  on  the 
whole  a  rather  unhappy  one,  and  that  luckily 
they  had  no  children.  Not  that  Scott  did  not 
appreciate  with  the  keenest  zest  his  own 
Jeannie  Deanses  and  Dandie  Dinmonts,  but  they 
must  keep  their  place  ;  it  is  not  human  nature 
they  vindicate,  but  peasant  virtues. 


THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW    BOOK      11 

But  from  the  moment  American  fiction  came 
upon  the  scene,  it  brought  a  change.  Peasant 
virtue  vanishes  when  the  peasant  is  a  possible 
president,  and  what  takes  its  place  is  individual 
manhood,  irrespective  of  social  position.  The 
heroes  who  successively  conquered  Europe  in 
the  hands  of  American  authors  were  of  low 
estate.  —  a  backwoodsman,  a  pilot,  a  negro  slave, 
a  lamplighter;  to  which  gallery  Bret  Harte 
added  the  gambler,  and  the  authors  of  "  Democ 
racy  "  and  the  "  Bread-Winners  "  flung  in  the 
politician.  In  all  these  figures  social  distinc 
tions  disappear :  "  a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that." 
And  so  of  our  later  writers,  Miss  Wilkins  in 
New  England,  Miss  Murfree  in  Tennessee,  Mr. 
Cable  in  Louisiana,  Mr.  Howe  in  Kansas,  Dr. 
Eororleston  in  Indiana,  Julien  Gordon  in  New 

OO 

York,  all  represent  the  same  impulse  ;  all  recog 
nize  that  "  all  men  are  created  equal "  in  Jeffer 
son's  sense,  because  all  recognize  the  essential 
and  inalienable  value  of  the  individual  man. 

It  would  be,  of  course,  absurd  to  claim  that 
America  represents  the  whole  of  this  tendency, 
for  the  tendency  is  a  part  of  that  wave  of  demo 
cratic  feeling  which  is  overflowing  the  world. 


12      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

But  Dickens,  who  initiated  the  movement  in 
English  fiction,  was  unquestionably  influenced 
by  that  very  American  life  which  he  disliked 
and  caricatured,  and  we  have  since  seen  a  simi 
lar  impulse  spread  through  other  countries.  In 
the  Russian,  the  Norwegian,  the  Spanish,  the 
Italian  fiction,  we  now  rarely  find  a  plot  turning 
on  some  merely  conventional  difference  between 
the  social  positions  of  hero  and  heroine.  In 
England  the  change  has  been  made  more  slowly 
than  elsewhere,  so  incongruous  is  it  in  the  midst 
of  a  society  which  still,  in  the  phrase  of  Brander 
Matthews,  accepts  dukes.  Indeed,  it  is  curious 
to  observe  that  for  a  time  it  was  still  found 
necessary,  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  transition, 
to  label  the  hero  with  his  precise  social  posi 
tion; —  as,  "  Steven  Lawrence,  Yeoman,"  "  John 
Halifax,  Gentleman,"  —  whereas  in  America  it 
would  have  been  left  for  the  reader  to  find  out 
whether  John  Halifax  was  or  was  not  a  gentle 
man,  and  no  label  would  have  been  thought 
needful. 

And  I  hasten  to  add,  what  I  should  not  always 
have  felt  justified  in  saying,  that  this  Amer 
ican  tendency  comes  to  its  highest  point  and  is 


THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK      13 

best  indicated  in  the  later  work  of  Mr.  Howells. 
Happy  is  that  author  whose  final  admirers  are, 
as  heroes  used  to  say,  ••  the  captives  of  his  bow 
and  spear,"  the  men  from  whom  he  met  his  ear 
lier  criticism.  Happy  is  that  man  who  has  the 
patience  to  follow,  like  Cicero,  his  own  genius, 
and  not  to  take  the  opinions  of  others  for  his 
guide.  And  the  earlier  work  of  Mr.  Howells 
—  that  is,  everything  before  •*  The  Rise  of  Silas 
Lapham,"  "  Annie  Kilburn,"  and  "  The  Hazard 
of  New  Fortunes  "  —  falls  now  into  its  right 
place  ;  its  alleged  thinness  becomes  merely  that 
of  the  painter's  sketches  and  studies  before  his 
maturer  work  begins.  As  the  Emperor  Alaric 
felt  always  an  unseen  power  drawing  him  on  to 
Rome,  so  Howells  has  evidently  felt  a  magnet 
drawing  him  on  to  New  York,  and  it  was  not 
until  he  set  up  his  canvas  there  that  it  had  due 
proportions.  My  friend  Mr.  James  Parton  used 
to  say  that  students  must  live  in  New  England, 
where  there  were  better  libraries,  but  that 
"  loafers  and  men  of  genius  "  should  live  in  New 
York.  To  me  personally  it  seems  a  high  price 
to  pay  for  the  privileges  either  of  genius  or  of 
loafing,  but  it  is  well  that  Howells  has  at  last 


14   THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

paid  it  for  the  sake  of  the  results.  It  is  impos 
sible  to  deny  that  he  as  a  critic  has  proved  him 
self  sometimes  narrow,  and  has  rejected  with 
too  great  vehemence  that  which  lay  outside  of 
his  especial  domain.  It  is  not  necessary,  be 
cause  one  prefers  apples,  to  condemn  oranges ; 
and  he  has  sometimes  needed  the  caution  of  the 
old  judge  to  the  young  one :  "  Beware  how  you 
give  reasons  for  your  decisions ;  for,  while  your 
decisions  will  usually  be  right,  your  reasons  will 
very  often  be  wrong."  But  as  he  has  become 
touched  more  and  more  with  the  enthusiasm  of 
humanity,  he  has  grown  better  than  his  reasons, 
far  better  than  his  criticisms ;  and  it  is  with 
him  and  with  the  school  he  represents  that  the 
hope  of  American  literature  just  now  rests.  The 
reason  why  he  finds  no  delicate  shading  or  gra 
dation  of  character  unimportant  is  that  he  rep 
resents  the  dignity  and  importance  of  the 
individual  man. 

When  the  future  literary  historian  of  the 
English-speaking  world  looks  back  to  this 
period  he  will  be  compelled  to  say,  "While 
England  hailed  as  great  writing  and  significant 
additions  to  literature  the  brutalities  of  Haggard 


THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   XEW  BOOK      15 

and  the  garlic  flavors  of  Kipling,  there  was  in 
America  a  student  of  life,  who  painted  with  the 
skill  that  Scott  revered  in  Miss  Austen,  but  not 
on  the  two  inches  of  ivory  that  Miss  Austen 
chose.  He  painted  on  a  canvas  large  enough 
for  the  tragedies  of  New  York,  large  enough 
for  the  future  of  America.  Rich  and  luminous 
as  George  Eliot,  he  had  the  sense  of  form  and 
symmetry  which  she  had  not;  graphic  in  his 
characterization  as  Hardy,  he  did  not  stop,  like 
Hardy,  with  a  single  circle  of  villagers.  What 
the  future  critic  will  say,  we  too  should  be 
ready  to  perceive.  If  England  finds  him  tire 
some,  so  much  the  worse  for  England ;  if  Eng 
land  prefers  dime  novels  and  cut-and-thrust 
Christmas  melodramas,  and  finds  in  what 
Howells  writes  only  "  transatlantic  kickshaws  " 
because  he  paints  character  and  life,  we  must 
say,  as  our  fathers  did,  ki  Farewell,  dear  Eng 
land,"  and  seek  what  is  our  own.  Emerson  set 
free  our  poetry,  our  prose  ;  Howells  is  setting 
free  our  fiction ;  he  himself  is  as  yet  only  half 
out  of  the  chrysalis,  but  the  wings  are  there. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  in  litera 
ture,  alone  of  all  arts,  place  is  of  secondary  im- 


16      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

portance,  for  its  masterpieces  can  be  carried 
round  the  world  in  one's  pockets.  We  need  to 
go  to  Europe  to  see  the  great  galleries,  to  hear 
the  music  of  Wagner,  but  the  boy  who  reads 
^Eschylus  and  Horace  and  Shakespeare  by  his 
pine-knot  fire  has  at  his  command  the  essence 
of  all  universities,  so  far  as  literary  training 
goes.  But  were  this  otherwise,  we  must 
remember  that  libraries,  galleries,  and  buildings 
are  all  secondary  to  that  great  human  life  of 
which  they  are  only  the  secretions  or  appen 
dages.  "  My  Madonnas  "  —  thus  wrote  to  me 
that  recluse  woman  of  genius,  Emily  Dickinson 
—  "  are  the  women  who  pass  my  house  to  their 
work,  bearing  Saviours  in  their  arms."  Words 
wait  on  thoughts,  thoughts  on  life ;  and  after 
these,  technical  training  is  an  easy  thing. 
"  The  art  of  composition,"  wrote  Thoreau,  "  is 
as  simple  as  the  discharge  of  a  bullet  from  a  rifle, 
and  its  masterpieces  imply  an  infinitely  greater 
force  behind  them."  What  are  the  two  unmis 
takable  rifle-shots  in  American  literature  thus 
far?  John  Brown's  speech  in  the  court-room 
and  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  address. 

Yielding  to  no  one  in  the  desire  to  see   our 


THE    NEW    WORLD    AND    THE    NEW  BOOK      17 

land  filled  with  libraries,  with  galleries,  with 
museums,  with  fine  buildings,  I  must  still  main 
tain  that  all  those  things  are  secondary  to  that 
vigorous  American  life,  which  is  destined  to 
assimilate  and  digest  them  all.  We  are  still  in 
allegiance  to  Europe  for  a  thousand  things ; 
—  clothes,  art,  scholarship.  For  many  years  we 
must  yet  go  to  Europe  as  did  Robinson  Crusoe 
to  his  wreck,  for  the  very  materials  of  living. 
But  materials  take  their  value  from  him  who 
uses  them,  and  that  wreck  would  have  long 
since  passed  from  memory  had  there  not  been 
a  Robinson  Crusoe.  I  am  willing  to  be  cen 
sured  for  too  much  national  self-confidence,  for 
it  is  still  true  that  we,  like  the  young  Cicero, 
need  that  quality.  Goethe's  world-literature  is, 
no  doubt,  the  ultimate  aim,  but  a  strong  national 
literature  must  come  first.  The  new  book  must 
express  the  spirit  of  the  New  World.  We  need 
some  repressing,  no  doubt,  and  every  European 
newspaper  is  free  to  apply  it;  we  listen  with 
exemplary  meekness  to  every  little  European 
lecturer  who  comes  to  enlighten  us,  in  words  of 
one  syllable,  as  to  what  we  knew  very  well 
before.  We  need  something  of  repression,  but 


18      THE  NEW   WOBLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

much  more  of  stimulus.  So  Spenser's  Brito- 
mart,  when  she  entered  the  enchanted  hall, 
found  above  four  doors  in  succession  the 
inscription,  "  Be  bold !  be  bold !  be  bold  !  be 
bold ! "  and  only  over  the  fifth  door  was  the 
inscription,  needful  but  wholly  subordinate, 
"  Be  not  too  bold  !  " 


AN   AMERICAN   TEMPERAMENT  19 

II 

AN  AMERICAN  TEMPERAMENT 


n^HE  recent  assertion  of  the  London  corre 
spondent  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  that 
Englishmen  like  every  American  to  be  an  Amer 
ican,  has  a  curious  interest  in  connection  with 
some  remarks  of  the  late  Matthew  Arnold,  which 
seem  to  look  in  an  opposite  direction.  Lord 
Houghton  once  told  me  that  the  earlier  Ameri 
can  guests  in  London  society  were  often  cen 
sured  as  being  too  English  in  appearance  and 
manner,  and  as  wanting  in  a  distinctive  flavor 
of  Americanism.  He  instanced  Ticknor  and 
Sumner  ;  and  we  can  all  remember  that  there 
were  at  first  similar  criticisms  on  Lowell.  It  is 
indeed  a  form  of  comment  to  which  all  Ameri 
cans  are  subject  in  England,  if  they  have  the 
ill-luck  to  have  color  in  their  cheeks  and  not  to 
speak  very  much  through  their  noses  ;  in  that 
case  they  are  apt  to  pass  for  Englishmen  by  no 
wish  of  their  own,  and  to  be  suspected  of  a  little 
double  dealing  when  they  hasten  to  reveal  their 


20       THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

birthplace.  It  very  often  turns  out  that  the 
demand  for  a  distinctive  Americanism  really 
seeks  only  the  external  peculiarities  that  made 
Joaquin  Miller  and  Buffalo  Bill  popular ;  an 
Americanism  that  can  at  any  moment  be  anni 
hilated  by  a  pair  of  scissors.  It  is  something, 
no  doubt,  to  be  allowed  even  such  an  amount 
of  nationality  as  this  ;  and  Washington  Irving 
attributed  the  English  curiosity  about  him  to 
the  fact  that  he  held  a  quill  in  his  fingers  instead 
of  sticking  it  in  his  hair,  as  was  expected. 

But  it  would  seem  that  Mr.  Arnold,  on  the 
other  hand,  disapproved  the  attempt  to  set  up 
any  claim  whatever  to  a  distinctive  American 
temperament;  and  he  has  twice  held  up  one 
of  our  own  authors  for  reprobation  as  having 
asserted  that  the  American  is,  on  the  whole,  of 
lighter  build  and  has  "  a  drop  more  of  nervous 
fluid"  than  the  Englishman.  This  is  not  the 
way,  he  thinks,  in  which  a  serious  literature  is 
to  be  formed.  But  it  turns  out  that  the  im 
mediate  object  of  the  writer  of  the  objection 
able  remark  was  not  to  found  a  literature,  but 
simply  to  utter  a  physiological  caution  ;  the 
object  of  the  essay  in  which  it  occurs  —  one 


AN   AMERICAN   TEMPERAMENT  21 

called  "  The  Murder  of  the  Innocents,"  l  being 
simply  to  caution  this  more  nervous  race  against 
overworking  their  children  in  school ;  an  aim 
which  was  certainly  as  far  as  possible  from  what 
Mr.  Arnold  calls  "  tall  talk  and  self-glorification." 
If  a  nation  is  not  to  be  saved  by  pointing 
out  is  own  physiological  perils,  what  is  to 
save  it? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  will  be  generally 
claimed  by  Americans,  I  fancy,  that  whatever 
else  their  much-discussed  nation  may  have,  it 
has  at  least  developed  a  temperament  for  itself ; 
"  an  ill-favored  thing,  but  mine  own,"  as  Touch 
stone  says  of  Audrey.  There  is  no  vanity  or 
self-assertion  involved  in  this,  any  more  than 
when  a  person  of  blond  complexion  claims  not 
to  be  a  brunette  or  a  brunette  meekly  insists 
upon  not  being  regarded  as  fair-haired.  If  the 
American  is  expected  to  be  in  all  respects  the 
duplicate  of  the  Englishman,  and  is  only  charged 
with  inexpressible  inferiority  in  quality  and 
size,  let  us  know  it;  but  if  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  of  transplantation  under  a  new  sky 
and  in  new  conditions  have  made  any  difference 

i  Out-Door  Papers,  p.  104. 


22      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

in  the  type,  let  us  know  that  also.  In  truth, 
the  difference  is  already  so  marked  that  Mr. 
Arnold  himself  concedes  it  at  every  step  in 
his  argument,  and  has  indeed  stated  it  in  very 
much  the  same  terms  which  an  American  would 
have  employed.  In  a  paper  entitled  "From 
Easter  to  August,"  1  he  says  frankly :  "  Our 
countrymen  [namely,  the  English],  with  a  thou 
sand  good  qualities,  are  really  perhaps  a  good 
deal  wanting  in  lucidity  and  flexibility ; "  and 
again  in  the  same  essay  :  "  The  whole  American 
nation  may  be  called  intelligent;  that  is,  quick." 
This  would  seem  to  be  conceding  the  very  point 
at  issue  between  himself  and  the  American 
writer  whom  he  is  criticising. 

The  same  difference  of  temperament,  in  the 
direction  of  a  greater  quickness  —  what  the  wit 
of  Edmund  Quincy  once  designated  as  "  specific 
levity"  —  on  the  part  of  Americans  is  certainly 
very  apparent  to  every  one  of  us  who  visits 
England ;  and  not  infrequently  makes  itself 
perceptible,  even  without  a  surgical  operation, 
to  our  English  visitors.  Professor  Tyndall  is 
reported  to  have  said  —  and  if  he  did  not  say  it, 

1  Nineteenth  Century  for  September,  1887. 


AN   AMERICAN   TEMPERAMENT  23 

some  one  else  pointed  it  out  for  him  —  that, 
whereas  in  his  London  scientific  lectures  he 
always  had  to  repeat  his  explanations  three 
times ;  first  telling  his  audience  in  advance 
what  his  experiments  were  to  accomplish,  then 
during  the  process  explaining  what  was  being 
accomplished,  and  then  at  last  recapitulating 
what  had  actually  been  done  ;  he  found  it  best, 
in  America,  to  omit  one,  if  not  two,  of  these 
expositions.  In  much  the  same  way,  the  director 
of  a  company  of  English  comedians  complained 
to  a  friend  of  mine  that  American  audiences 
laughed  a  great  deal  too  soon  for  them,  and  took 
the  joke  long  before  it  was  properly  elucidated. 
In  the  same  way  an  American  author,  who  had 
formerly  been  connected  with  the  St.  Nicholas 
magazine,  was  told  by  a  London  publisher  that 
the  plan  of  it  \vas  all  wrong.  "These  pages  of 
riddles  at  the  end,  for  instance :  no  child  would 
ever  guess  them."  And  though  the  American 
assured  him  that  they  were  guessed  regularly 
every  month  in  twenty  thousand  families,  the 
Englishmen  still  shook  his  head.  Certainly  the 
difference  between  the  national  temperament 
will  be  doubted  by  no  American  public  speaker 


24      THE    NEW    WORLD    AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

in  England  who  has  had  one  of  his  hearers  call 
upon  him  the  next  morning  to  express  satis 
faction  in  the  clever  anecdote  which  it  had  taken 
his  English  auditor  a  night's  meditation  to  com 
prehend. 

It  is  impossible  to  overrate  the  value,  in 
developing  an  independent  national  feeling  in 
America,  of  the  prolonged  series  of  rather  un- 
amiable  criticisms  that  have  proceeded  from  the 
English  press  and  public  men  since  the  days  of 
Mrs.  Trollope  and  down  to  our  own  day.  It  has 
de-colonized  us ;  and  all  the  long  agony  of  the 
Civil  War,  when  all  the  privileged  classes  in 
England,  after  denouncing  us  through  long 
years  for  tolerating  slavery,  turned  and  de 
nounced  us  yet  more  bitterly  for  abolishing  it 
at  the  cost  of  our  own  heart's  blood,  only  com 
pleted  the  emancipation.  The  way  out  of  pro 
vincialism  is  to  be  frankly  and  even  brutally 
criticised ;  we  thus  learn  not  merely  to  see  our 
own  faults,  which  is  comparatively  easy,  but  to 
put  our  own  measure  on  the  very  authority  that 
condemns  us  ;  voir  le  monde,  Jest  juger  les 
juges.  We  thus  learn  to  trust  our  own  tem 
perament  ;  to  create  our  own  methods ;  or,  at 


AN    AMERICAN    TEMPERAMENT  25 

least,  to  select  our  own  teachers.  At  this 
moment  we  go  to  France  for  our  art  and  to 
Germany  for  our  science  as  completely  as  if 
there  were  no  such  nation  as  England  in  the 
world.  In  literature  the  tie  is  far  closer  with 
what  used  to  be  called  the  mother  country,  and 
this  because  of  the  identity  of  language.  All 
retrospective  English  literature  —  that  is,  all 
literature  more  than  a  century  or  two  old  —  is 
common  to  the  two  countries.  All  contemporary 
literature  cannot  yet  be  judged,  because  it  is 
contemporary.  The  time  may  come  when  not 
a  line  of  current  English  poetry  may  remain 
except  the  four  quatrains  hung  up  in  St.  Marga 
ret's  Church,  and  when  the  Matthew  Arnold 
of  Macaulay's  imaginary  New  Zealand  may 
find  with  surprise  that  Whittier  and  Lowell 
produced  something  more  worthy  of  that  acci 
dental  immortality  than  Browning  or  Tenny 
son.  The  time  may  come  when  a  careful  study 
of  even  the  despised  American  newspapers  may 
reveal  them  to  have  been  in  one  respect  nearer 
to  a  high  civilization  than  any  of  their  Euro 
pean  compeers ;  since  the  leading  American 
literary  journals  criticise  their  own  contributors 


26       THE    NEW    WORLD    AND   THE    NEW  BOOK 

with  the  utmost  freedom,  while  there  does  not 
seem  to  be  a  journal  in  London  or  Paris  that 
even  attempts  that  courageous  candor.  To 
dwell  merely  on  the  faults  and  follies  of  a 
nascent  nation  is  idle  ;  vitality  is  always  hope 
ful.  To  complain  that  a  nation's  very  strength 
carries  with  it  plenty  of  follies  and  excesses  is, 
as  Joubert  says,  to  ask  for  a  breeze  that  shall 
have  the  attribute  of  not  blowing;  demander 
du  vent  qui  rfait  point  de  mobilitc. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  EUROPE        '1 1 

• 

III 

THE   SHADOW   OF   EUROPE 

"TTTHEN  the  first  ocean  steamers  crossed  the 
^  Atlantic,  about  1838,  Willis  predicted 
that  they  would  only  make  American  literature 
more  provincial,  by  bringing  Europe  so  much 
nearer  than  before.  Yet  Emerson  showed  that 
there  was  an  influence  at  work  more  potent  than 
steamers,  and  the  colonial  spirit  in  our  literature 
began  to  dimmish  from  his  time.  In  the  days 
of  those  first  ocean  voyages,  the  favorite  literary 
journal  of  cultivated  Americans  was  the  New 
York  Albion,  which  was  conducted  expressly 
for  English  residents  on  this  continent ;  and  it 
was  considered  a  piece  of  American  audacity 
when  Horace  Greeley  called  Margaret  Fuller  to 
New  York,  that  the  Tribune  might  give  to  our 
literature  an  organ  of  its  own.  Later,  on  the 
establishment  of  Putnam's  Magazine,  in  1853,  I 
remember  that  one  of  the  most  enlightened  New 
York  journalists  predicted  to  me  the  absolute 
failure  of  the  whole  enterprise.  "Either  an 


28      THE   NEW   WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

American  magazine  will  command  no  respect," 
he  said,  "  or  it  must  be  better  than  Blackwood 
or  Fraser,  which  is  an  absurd  supposition." 
But  either  of  our  great  illustrated  magazines 
has  now  more  readers  in  England  than  Fra&er 
or  Blackwood  had  then  in  America  ;  and  to  this 
extent  Willis's  prediction  is  unfulfilled,  and  the 
shadow  of  Europe  is  lifted,  not  deepened,  over 
our  literature.  But  in  many  ways  the  glamour 
of  foreign  superiority  still  holds  ;  and  we  still 
see  much  of  the  old  deferential  attitude  prevail 
ing.  Prince  Albert  said  of  Germany,  in  1859, 
that  its  rock  ahead  was  self-sufficiency.  In  our 
own  country,  as  to  literature  and  science,  to  say 
nothing  of  art,  our  rock  ahead  is  not  self-suffi 
ciency,  but  self -depreciation.  Men  still  smile 
at  the  Congressman  who  said,  "  What  have  we 
to  do  with  Europe  ?  "  but  I  sometimes  wish,  for 
the  credit  of  the  craft,  that  it  had  been  a  literary 
man  who  said  it.  After  all,  it  was  only  a 
rougher  paraphrase  of  Napoleon's  equally  trench 
ant  words :  "  Cette  vieille  Europe  m'ennuie" 

The  young  American  who  goes  to  London, 
and  finds  there  the  most  agreeable  literary 
society  in  the  world,  because  the  most  central- 


THE  SHADOW   OF   EUROPE  29 

ized  and  compact,  can  hardly  believe  at  first 
that  the  authors  around  him  are  made  of  the 
same  clay  with  those  whom  he  has  often  jostled 
on  the  sidewalk  at  home.  He  finds  himself 
dividing  his  scanty  hours  between  celebrated 
writers  on  the  one  side,  and  great  historic 
remains  on  the  other ;  as  I  can  remember,  one 
day,  to  have  weighed  a  visit  to  Darwin  against 
one  to  York  Minster,  and  later  to  have  post 
poned  Stonehenge,  which  seemed  likely  to 
endure,  for  Tennyson,  wrho  perhaps  might  not. 
The  young  American  sees  in  London,  to  quote 
Willis  again,  k*  whole  shelves  of  his  library 
walking  about  in  coats  and  gowns,"  and  they 
seem  for  the  moment  far  more  interesting  than 
the  similar  shelves  in  home-made  garments 
behind  him.  He  is  not  cured  until  he  is  some 
day  startled  with  the  discovery  that  there  are 
cultivated  foreigners  to  whom  his  own  world  is 
foreign,  and  therefore  fascinating ;  men  who 
think  the  better  of  him  for  having  known  Mark 
Twain,  and  women  who  are  unwearied  in  their 
curiosity  about  the  personal  ways  of  Longfel 
low.  Nay,  when  I  once  mentioned  to  that  fine 
old  Irish  gentleman,  the  late  Richard  D.  Webb. 


30      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

at  his  house  in  Dublin,  that  I  had  felt  a  thrill 
of  pleasure  on  observing  the  street  sign,  denot 
ing  Fishamble  Lane,  at  Cork,  and  recalling  the 
ballad  about  "  Misthress  Judy  McCarty,  of 
Fishamble  Lane,"  he  pleased  me  by  saying  that 
he  had  felt  just  so  in  New  York,  when  he  saw 
the  name  of  Madison  Square,  and  thought  of 
Miss  Flora  McFlimsey.  So  our  modest  conti 
nent  had  already  its  storied  heroines  and  its 
hallowed  ground ! 

There  are,  undoubtedly,  points  in  which 
Europe,  and  especially  England,  has  still  the 
advantage  of  America;  such,  for  instance,  as 
weekly  journalism.  In  regard  to  printed  books 
there  is  also  still  an  advantage  in  quantity,  but 
not  in  quality ;  while  in  magazine  literature  the 
balance  seems  to  incline  just  now  the  other 
way.  I  saw  it  claimed  confidently,  not  long 
since,  that  the  English  magazines  had  "  more 
solid  value  "  than  our  own  ;  but  this  solidity  now 
consists,  I  should  say,  more  in  the  style  than  in 
the  matter,  and  is  a  doubtful  benefit,  like  solid 
ity  in  a  pudding.  When  the  writer  whom  I 
quote  went  on  to  cite  the  saying  of  a  young 
girl,  that  she  could  always  understand  an 


THE   SHADOW    OF   EUROPE  31 

American  periodical,  but  never  opened  an 
English  one  without  something  unintelligible,  it 
seemed  to  me  a  bit  of  evidence  whose  bearing 
was  quite  uncertain.  It  reminded  me  of  a 
delightful  old  lady,  well  known  to  me,  who, 
when  taxed  by  her  daughter  with  reading  a  book 
quite  beyond  her  comprehension,  replied:  "But 
where  is  the  use  of  reading  a  book  that  you  can 
understand?  It  does  you  no  good."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  English  magazines  are 
commonly  not  magazines  at  all,  in  the  American 
sense.  Mr.  M.  D.  Con  way  well  said  that  the 
Contemporary  Review  and  the  Fortnightly  were 
simply  circular  letters  addressed  by  a  few  culti 
vated  gentlemen  to  those  belonging  to  the  same 
club.  It  is  not  until  a  man  knows  himself  to 
be  writing  for  a  hundred  thousand  readers  that 
he  is  compelled  to  work  out  his  abstrusest 
thought  into  clearness,  just  as  a  sufficient  pres 
sure  transforms  opaque  snow  into  pellucid  ice. 
In  our  great  American  magazines,  history  and 
science  have  commonly  undergone  this  process, 
and  the  reader  may  be  gratified,  not  ashamed, 
at  comprehending  them. 

The  best  remedy  for  too  profound  a  deference 


82      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

toward  European  literary  work  is  to  test  the 
author  on  some  ground  with  which  we  in  Amer 
ica  cannot  help  being  familiar.  It  is  this  which 
makes  a  book  of  travels  among  us,  or  even  a 
lecturing  trip,  so  perilous  for  a  foreign  reputa 
tion  ;  and  among  the  few  who  can  bear  this  test 
—  as  De  Tocqueville,  Von  Hoist,  the  Comte  de 
Paris  —  it  is  singularly  rare  to  find  an  English 
man.  If  the  travellers  have  been  thus  unfortu 
nate,  how  much  more  those  who  have  risked 
themselves  on  cis-Atlantic  themes  without  trav 
elling.  No  living  English  writer  stood  higher 
in  America  than  Sir  Henry  Maine  until  we 
watched  him  as  he  made  the  perilous  transition 
from  "  Ancient  Law  "  to  modern  "  Popular 
Government,"  and  saw  him  approaching  what 
he  himself  admits  to  be  the  most  important  theme 
in  modern  history,  with  apparently  but  some  half- 
dozen  authorities  to  draw  upon,  —  the  United 
States  Constitution,  the  Federalist,  and  two  or 
three  short  biographies.  Had  an  American  writ 
ten  on  the  most  unimportant  period  of  the  most 
insignificant  German  principality  with  a  basis  of 
reading  no  larger,  we  should  have  wished  that 
his  nationality  had  been  kept  a  secret.  It  is 


THE   SHADOW   OF   EUROPE  33 

not  strange,  on  such  a  method,  tnat  Maine 
should  inform  us  that  the  majority  of  the  pres 
ent  State  governments  were  formed  before  the 
Union,  and  that  only  half  the  original  thirteen 
colonies  held  slaves.  So  Mr.  John  A.  Doyle, 
writing  an  extended  history  of  American  coloni 
zation,  put  into  his  first  volume  a  map  making 
the  lines  of  all  the  early  grants  run  north  and 
south  instead  of  east  and  west ;  and  this  having 
been  received  with  polite  incredulity,  gave  us 
another  map  depicting  the  Xew  England  colo 
nies  in  1700,  with  Plymouth  still  delineated  as  a 
separate  government,  although  it  had  been 
united  with  Massachusetts  eight  years  before. 
When  a  lady  in  a  London  drawing-room 
sends,  by  a  returning  New  Yorker,  an  urgent 
message  to  her  cousin  at  Colorado  Springs,  we 
rather  enjoy  it,  and  call  it  only  pretty  Fanny's 
way ;  she  is  not  more  ignorant  of  North  Ameri 
can  geography  than  we  ourselves  may  be  of  that 
of  South  America.  But  when  we  find  that 
English  scholars  of  established  reputation  be 
tray,  when  on  ground  we  know,  defects  of 
method  that  seem  hopeless,  what  reverence  is 
left  for  those  who  keep  on  ground  that  we  do 


34      THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

not  know?  In  time,  the  shadow  of  Europe 
must  lose  something  of  its  impressiveness.  Dr. 
Creighton,  in  his  preface  to  the  English  "  His 
torical  Review,"  counts  in  all  Americans  as 
merely  so  many  "  outlying  English  ;  "  but  it  is 
time  to  recognize  that  American  literature  is 
not,  and  never  again  can  be,  merely  an  outlying 
portion  of  the  literature  of  England. 


ON    TAKING   OURSELVES   SERIOUSLY          35 
IV 

ON   TAKING    OURSELVES   SERIOUSLY 


n^OLSTOI  says,  in  "  Anna  Karenina,"  that  no 
nation  will  ever  come  to  anything  unless  it 
attaches  some  importance  to  itself.  (Les  seules 
nations  qui  aient  de  Vavenir,  les  seules  quon 
puisse  nommer  historiques,  sont  celles  qui  sentent 
^importance  et  le  valeur  de  leur  institutions.) 
It  is  curious  that  ours  seems  to  be  the  only  con 
temporary  nation  which  is  denied  this  simple 
privilege  of  taking  itself  seriously.  What  is 
criticised  in  us  is  not  so  much  that  our  social 
life  is  inadequate,  as  that  we  find  it  worth  study 
ing  ;  not  so  much  that  our  literature  is  insuffi 
cient,  as  that  we  think  it,  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
disdainful  phrase,  "important."  In  short,  we 
are  denied  not  merely  the  pleasure  of  being  at 
tractive  to  other  people,  which  can  easily  be 
spared,  but  the  privilege  that  is  usually  con 
ceded  to  the  humblest,  of  being  of  some  inter 
est  to  ourselves. 
•  The  bad  results  of  this  are  very  plain.  They 


36      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND  THE   NEW  BOOK 

are,  indeed,  so  great  that  the  -evils  which  were 
supposed  to  come  to  our  literature,  for  instance, 
from  the  absence  of  international  copyright, 
seem  trivial  in  comparison.  The  very  persons 
who  are  working  the  hardest  to  elevate  our  civ 
ilization  are  constantly  called  from  their  duties, 
and,  what  is  worse,  are  kept  in  a  constant  state 
of  subdued  exasperation,  by  the  denial  of  their 
very  right  to  do  these  duties.  "My  work," 
says  Emerson,  "  may  be  of  no  importance,  but  I 
must  not  think  it  of  no  importance  if  I  would 
do  it  well."  Those  of  us  who  toiled  for  years 
to  remove  from  this  nation  the  stain  of  slavery, 
remember  how,  when  the  best  blood  of  our  kin 
dred  was  lavished  to  complete  the  sacrifice,  all 
the  intellectual  society  of  England  turned  upon 
us  and  reproached  us  for  the  deed.  "  The  great 
est  war  of  principle  which  has  been  waged  in  this 
generation,"  wrote  Motley  in  one  of  his  letters, 
"  was  of  no  more  interest  to  her,  except  as  it  bore 
upon  the  cotton  question,  than  the  wretched  little 
squabbles  of  Mexico  or  South  America." l  And 
so  those  Americans  who  are  spending  their  lives  in 
the  effort  to  remove  the  very  defects  visible  in  our 

i  Letters,  I.,  373. 


OX   TAKING    OURSELVES    SERIOUSLY          37 

letters,  our  arts,  our  literature,  are  met  con 
stantly  by  the  insolent  assumption,  not  that 
these  drawbacks  exist,  but  that  they  are  not 
worth  removing. 

How  magnificent,  for  instance,  is  the  work  con 
stantly  done  among  us,  by  private  and  public 
munificence,  in  the  support  of  our  libraries  and 
schools.  Carlyle,  in  one  of  his  early  journals,  de 
plores  that  while  every  village  around  him  has  its 
place  to  lock  up  criminals,  not  one  has  a  public 
library.  In  the  State  of  Massachusetts  this 
condition  of  things  is  coming  to  be  reversed, 
since  many  villages  have  no  jail,  and  free  libra 
ries  will  soon  be  universal.  The  writer  is  at  this 
moment  one  of  the  trustees  of  three  admirable 
donations  just  given  by  a  young  man  not  thirty- 
five  to  the  city  of  his  birth,  —  a  city  hall,  a  pub 
lic  library,  and  a  manual  training  school.  He 
is  not  a  man  of  large  fortune,  as  fortunes  go. 
and  his  personal  expenditures  are  on  a  very 
modest  scale  :  he  keeps  neither  yachts  nor  race 
horses;  his  name  never  appears  in  the  lists  of 
fashionables,  summer  or  winter ;  but  he  simply 
does  his  duty  to  American  civilization  in  this 
wav.  There  are  multitudes  of  others,  all  over 


38      THE   NEW    WOULD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

the  land,  who  do  the  same  sort  of  thing ;  they 
are  the  most  essentially  indigenous  and  Ameri 
can  type  we  have,  and  their  strength  is  in  this, 
that  they  find  their  standard  of  action  not 
abroad,  but  at  home ;  they  take  their  nation 
seriously.  Yet  this,  which  should  be  the  thing 
that  most  appeals  to  every  foreign  observer,  is, 
on  the  contrary,  the  very  thing  which  the  aver 
age  foreign  observer  finds  most  offensive.  "  Do 
riot  tell  me  only,"  says  Matthew  Arnold, 
"  ...  of  the  great  and  growing  number  of 
your  churches  and  schools,  libraries  and  news 
papers  ;  tell  me  also  if  your  civilization  —  which 
is  the  grand  name  you  give  to  all  this  develop 
ment  —  tell  me  if  your  civilization  is  interest- 
ing." 

Set  aside  the  fact  of  transfer  across  an  ocean ; 
set  aside  the  spectacle  of  a  self-governing  peo 
ple;  if  there  is  no  interest  in  the  spectacle  of 
a  nation  of  sixty  million  people  laboring  with 
all  its  might  to  acquire  the  means  and  resources 
of  civilized  life,  then  there  is  nothing  interest 
ing  on  earth.  A  hundred  years  hence,  the 
wonder  will  be,  not  that  we  Americans  attached 
so  much  importance,  at  this  stage,  to  these 


ON   TAKING   OTJKSELVES   SERIOUSLY          39 

efforts  of  ours,  but  that  even  we  appreciated 
their  importance  so  little.  If  the  calculations 
of  Canon  Zincke  are  correct,  in  his  celebrated 
pamphlet,  the  civilization  which  we  are  organ 
izing  is  the  great  civilization  of  the  future.  He 
computes  that  in  1980  the  English-speaking 
population  of  the  globe  will  be,  at  the  present 
rate  of  progress,  one  billion  ;  and  that  of  this 
number,  eight  hundred  million  will  dwell  in  the 
United  States.  Now,  all  the  interest  we  take 
in  our  schools,  colleges,  libraries,  galleries,  is 
but  preliminary  work  in  founding  this  great 
future  civilization.  Toils  and  sacrifices  for  this 
end  may  be  compared,  as  Longfellow  compares 
the  secret  studies  of  an  author,  to  the  sub 
merged  piers  of  a  bridge  :  they  are  out  of  sight, 
but  without  them  no  structure  can  endure.  If 
American  society  is  really  unimportant,  and  is 
foredoomed  to  fail,  all  these  efforts  will  go  with 
it ;  but  if  it  has  a  chance  of  success,  these  are 
to  be  its  foundations.  If  they  are  to  be  laid, 
they  must  be  laid  seriously.  "  No  man  can  do 
anything  well,"  says  Emerson,  "  who  does  not 
think  that  what  he  does  is  the  centre  of  the 
visible  universe." 


40      THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

There  is  a  prevailing  theory,  which  seems  to 
me  largely  flavored  with  cant,  that  we  must 
accept  with  the  utmost  humility  all  foreign 
criticism,  because  it  represents  a  remoter 
tribunal  than  our  own.  But  the  fact  still 
remains,  that  while  some  things  in  art  and  litera 
ture  are  best  judged  from  a  distance,  other 
things  —  including  the  whole  department  of 
local  coloring  —  can  be  only  judged  near  home. 
The  better  the  work  is  done,  in  this  aspect,  the 
more  essential  it  is  that  it  should  be  viewed 
with  knowledge.  Looking  at  some  marine 
sketches  by  a  teacher  of  a  good  deal  of  note, 
the  other  day,  I  was  led  to  point  out  the  fact 
that  she  had  given  her  schooner  a  jib,  but  had 
attached  it  to  no  bowsprit,  and  had  anchored  a 
whole  fleet  of  dories  by  the  stern  instead  of 
the  bow.  When  I  called  the  artist's  attention 
to  these  peculiarities,  the  simple  answer  was  : 
"  I  know  nothing  whatever  about  boats.  I 
painted  only  what  I  saw,  or  thought  I  saw." 
In  the  same  way  one  can  scarcely  open  a  foreign 
criticism  on  an  American  book,  without  seeing 
that,  however  good  may  be  the  abstract  canons 
of  criticism  adopted,  the  detailed  comment  is  as 


ON    TAKING    OURSELVES    SERIOUSLY         41 

confused  as  if  a  landsman  were  writing  about 
seamanship.  When,  for  instance,  a  vivacious 
Londoner  like  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  attempts  to 
deal  with  that  profound  imaginative  creation, 
Arthur  Dimmesdale,  in  the  "Scarlet  Letter," 
he  fails  to  comprehend  him  from  an  obvious 
and  perhaps  natural  want  of  acquaintance  with 
the  whole  environment  of  the  man.  To  Mr. 
Lang  he  is  simply  a  commonplace  clerical  Love 
lace,  a  dissenting  clergyman  caught  in  a  shabby 
intrigue.  But  if  this  clever  writer  had  known 
the  Puritan  clergy  as  we  know  them,  the  high- 
priests  of  a  Jewish  theocracy,  with  the  whole 
work  of  God  in  a  strange  land  resting  on 
their  shoulders,  he  would  have  comprehended 
the  awful  tragedy  in  this  tortured  soul,  and 
would  have  seen  in  him  the  profoundest  and 
most  minutely  studied  of  all  Hawthorne's 
characterizations.  The  imaginary  offender  for 
whom  that  great  author  carried  all  winter,  as 
Mrs.  Hawthorne  told  me,  "a  knot  in  his  fore 
head,"  is  not  to  be  viewed  as  if  his  tale  were  a 
mere  chapter  out  of  the  "  Memoires  de  Casa 
nova." 

When,    at    the    beginning   of    this   century, 


42      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE  NEW  BOOK 

Isaiah  Thomas  founded  the  American  Anti 
quarian  Society,  he  gave  it  as  one  of  his  avowed 
objects  "  that  the  library  should  contain  a 
complete  collection  of  the  works  of  American 
authors."  There  was  nothing  extravagant,  at 
that  time,  in  the  supposition  that  a  single 
library  of  moderate  size  might  do  this ;  and 
the  very  impossibility  of  such  an  inclusion,  at 
this  day,  is  in  part  the  result  of  the  honest  zeal 
with  which  Isaiah  Thomas  recognized  the  "  im 
portance  "  of  our  nascent  literature.  A  dis 
paraging  opinion  of  any  of  these  American 
books,  or  of  all  of  them,  does  no  more  harm 
than  the  opinion  of  Pepys,  that  "  Comus  "  was 
"  an  insipid,  ridiculous  play."  In  many  cases 
the  opinion  will  be  well  deserved  ;  in  few  cases 
will  it  do  any  permanent  harm.  Since  Emer 
son,  we  have  ceased  to  be  colonial,  and  have 
therefore  ceased  to  be  over-sensitive.  The  only 
danger  is  that,  Emerson  being  dead,  there  should 
be  a  slight  reaction  toward  colonial  diffidence 
once  more;  that  we  should  again  pass  through 
the  apologetic  period  ;  that  we  should  cease  for 
a  time  to  take  ourselves  seriously. 


A   COSMOPOLITAN    STANDARD  43 


A  COSMOPOLITAN  STANDARD 

T  T  has  lately  become  the  fashion  in  the  United 
States  to  talk  of  the  cosmopolitan  standard 
as  the  one  thing  needful ;  to  say  that  formerly 
American  authors  were  judged  by  their  own 
local  tribunals,  but  henceforth  they  must  be 
appraised  by  the  world's  estimate.  The  trouble 
is,  that  for  most  of  those  who  reason  in  this 
way,  cosmopolitanism  does  not  really  mean  the 
world's  estimate,  but  only  the  judgment  of 
Europe  —  a  judgment  in  which  America  icself 
is  to  have  no  voice.  Like  the  trade-winds  which 
so  terrified  the  sailors  of  Columbus,  it  blows 
only  from  the  eastward.  There  is  no  manner 
of  objection  to  cosmopolitanism,  if  the  word  be 
taken  in  earnest.  There  is  something  fine  in 
the  thought  of  a  federal  republic  of  letters,  a 
vast  literary  tribunal  of  nations,  in  which  each 
nation  has  a  seat;  but  this  is  just  the  kind  of 
cosmopolitanism  which  these  critics  do  not  seek. 
They  seek  merely  a  far-off  judgment,  and  this 


44   THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

is  no  better  than  a  local  tribunal;  in  some 
respects  it  is  worse.  The  remotest  standard  of 
judgment  that  I  ever  encountered  was  that 
of  the  late  Professor  Ko-Kun-Hua,  of  Harvard 
University.  There  was  something  delicious  in 
looking  into  his  serene  and  inscrutable  face,  and 
in  trying  to  guess  at  the  operations  of  a  highly 
trained  mind,  to  which  the  laurels  of  Plato  and 
Shakespeare  were  as  absolutely  unimportant  as 
those  of  the  Sweet  Singer  of  Michigan  ;  yet  the 
tribunal  which  he  afforded  could  hardly  be  called 
cosmopolitan.  He  undoubtedly  stood,  however, 
for  the  oldest  civilization ;  and  it  seemed  trivial 
to  turn  from  his  serene  Chinese  indifference, 
and  attend  to  children  of  a  day  like  the  Revue 
des  deux  Mondes  and  the  Saturday  Review.  If 
we  are  to  recognize  a  remote  tribunal,  let  us 
by  all  means  prefer  one  that  has  some  maturity 
about  it. 

But  it  is  worth  while  to  remember  that,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  men  who  created  the  Ameri 
can  government  gave  themselves  very  little 
concern  about  cosmopolitanism,  but  simply  went 
about  their  own  work.  They  took  hints  from 
older  nations,  and  especially  from  the  mother 


A    COSMOPOLITAN    STANDARD  45 

country,  but  they  acknowledged  no  jurisdiction 
there.  The  consensus  of  the  civilized  world, 
then  and  for  nearly  a  century  after,  viewed  the 
American  government  as  a  mere  experiment, 
and  republican  institutions  as  a  bit  of  short 
lived  folly ;  yet  the  existence  of  the  new  nation 
gave  it  a  voice  henceforth  in  every  tribunal  call 
ing  itself  cosmopolitan.  Henceforth  that  word 
includes  the  judgment  of  the  New  World  on 
the  Old,  as  well  as  that  of  the  Old  World  on  the 
New ;  and  when  we  construe  literary  cosmo 
politanism  in  the  same  way,  we  shall  be  on  as 
firm  ground  in  literature  as  in  government. 

So  long  as  we  look  merely  outside  of  ourselves 
for  a  standard,  we  are  as  weak  as  if  we  looked 
merely  inside  of  ourselves ;  probably  weaker, 
for  timidity  is  weaker  than  even  the  arrogance 
of  strength.  There  is  no  danger  that  the  for 
eign  judgment  will  not  duly  assert  itself ;  the 
danger  is,  that  our  own  self-estimate  will  be  too 
apologetic.  What  with  courtesy  and  good 
nature,  and  a  lingering  of  the  old  colonialism, 
we  are  not  yet  beyond  the  cringing  period  in 
our  literary  judgment.  The  obeisance  of  all 
good  society  in  London  before  a  successful  cir- 


46      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

cus-manager  from  America  was  only  a  shade 
more  humiliating  than  the  reverential  attention 
visible  in  the  American  press  when  Matthew 
Arnold  was  kind  enough  to  stand  on  tiptoe  upon 
our  lecture-platform  and  apply  his  little  meas 
uring-tape  to  the  great  shade  of  Emerson.  I 
should  like  to  see  in  our  literature  some  of  the 
honest  self-assertion  shown  by  Senator  Tracy  of 
Litchfield,  Connecticut,  during  Washington's 
administration,  in  his  reply  to  the  British  Min 
ister's  praises  of  Mrs.  Oliver  Wolcott's  beauty. 
"  Your  countrywoman,"  said  the  Englishman, 
"  would  be  admired  at  the  Court  of  St.  James." 
-  "  Sir,"  said  Tracy,  "  she  is  admired  even  on 
Litchfield  Hill." 

In  that  recent  book  of  aphorisms  which  has 
given  a  fresh  impulse  to  the  fading  fame  of  Dr. 
Channing,  he  points  out  that  the  hope  of  the 
world  lies  in  the  fact  that  parents  can  not  make 
of  their  children  what  they  will.  It  is  equally 
true  of  parent  nations.  How  easily  we  accept 
the  little  illusions  offered  us  by  our  elders  in 
the  world's  literature,  almost  forgetting  that 
two  and  two  make  four,  in  the  innocent  delight 
with  which  they  inspire  us  !  In  re-reading  Scott's 


A  COSMOPOLITAN   STANDARD  47 

"  Old  Mortality  "  the  other  day,  I  was  pleased 
to  find  myself  still  carried  away  by  the  author's 
own  grandiloquence,  where  he  describes  the 
approach  of  Claverhouse  and  his  men  to  the 
castle  of  Tillietudlem.  "  The  train  was  long  and 
imposing,  for  there  were  about  two  hundred 
and  fifty  horse  upon  the  march."  Two  hundred 
and  fifty !  Yet  I  read  it  for  the  moment  with 
as  little  demur  at  these  trivial  statistics  as  if 
our  own  Sheridan  had  never  ridden  out  of  Win 
chester  at  the  head  of  ten  thousand  cavalry. 
It  is  the  same  with  all  literature :  we  are  asked 
to  take  Europe  at  Europe's  own  valuation,  and 
then  to  take  America  at  Europe's  valuation  also  ; 
and  whenever  we  speak  of  putting  an  American 
valuation  upon  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe, 
we  are  told  that  this  will  not  do ;  this  is  not 
cosmopolitan. 

We  are  too  easily  misled,  in  exhorting  Ameri 
can  authors  to  a  proper  humility,  because  we 
forget  that  the  invention  of  printing  has  in  a 
manner  placed  all  nations  on  a  level.  Litera 
ture  is  the  only  art  whose  choicest  works  are 
easily  transportable.  Once  secure  a  public  li 
brary  in  every  town  —  a  condition  now  in  pro- 


48      THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

cess  of  fulfilment  in  our  older  American  States 
—  and  evety  bright  boy  or  girl  has  a  literary 
Louvre  and  Vatican  at  command.  Given  a 
taste  for  literature,  and  there  are  at  hand  all  the 
masters  of  the  art  — •  Plato  and  Homer,  Cicero 
and  Horace,  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and  Goethe. 
Travel  is  still  needed,  but  not  for  books  —  only 
for  other  forms  of  art,  for  variety  of  acquaint 
anceship,  and  for  the  habit  of  dealing  with  men 
and  women  of  many  nationalities.  The  most 
fastidious  American  in  Europe  should  not  look 
with  shame,  but  with  pride  and  hope,  upon  those 
throngs  of  his  fellow-countrymen  whom  he  sees 
crowding  the  art-galleries  of  Europe,  looking 
about  them  as  ignorantly,  if  you  please,  as  the 
German  barbarians  when  they  entered  Rome. 
It  is  not  so  hard  to  gain  culture ;  the  thing 
almost  impossible  to  obtain,  unless  it  be  born  in 
us,  is  the  spirit  of  initiative,  of  self-confidence. 
That  is  the  gift  with  which  great  nations  begin ; 
we  now  owe  our  chief  knowledge  of  Roman 
literature  and  art  to  the  descendants  of  those 
Northern  barbarians. 

And  it  must  be  kept  in  view,  finally,  that  a 
cosmopolitan  tribunal  is  at  best  but  a  court  of 


A   COSMOPOLITAN   STANDARD  49 

appeal,  and  is  commonly  valuable  in  proportion 
as  the  courts  cf  preliminary  jurisdiction  have 
done  their  duty.  The  best  preparation  forgoing 
abroad  is  to  know  the  worth  of  what  one  has 
seen  at  home.  I  remember  to  have  been  im 
pressed  with  a  little  sense  of  dismay,  on  first 
nearing  the  shores  of  Europe,  at  the  thought 
of  what  London  and  Paris  might  show  me  in 
the  way  of  great  human  personalities;  but  I 
said  to  myself,  ;'  To  one  who  has  heard  Emer 
son  lecture,  and  Parker  preach,  and  Garrison 
thunder,  and  Phillips  persuade,  there  is  no  rea 
son  why  Darwin  or  Victor  Hugo  should  pass 
for  more  than  mortal ; "  and  accordingly  they 
did  not.  We  shall  not  prepare  ourselves  for  a 
cosmopolitan  standard  by  ignoring  our  own 
great  names  or  undervaluing  the  literary  tradition 
that  has  produced  them.  When  Stuart  Xewton, 
the  artist,  was  asked,  on  first  arriving  in  London 
from  America,  whether  he  did  not  enjoy  the 
change,  he  answered  honestly,  "  I  here  see  such 
society  occasionally,  as  I  saw  at  home  all  the 
time."  At  this  day  the  self-respecting  Amer 
ican  sometimes  hears  admissions  in  Europe 
which  make  him  feel  that  we  are  already  ere- 


50      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

ating  a  standard,  not  waiting  to  be  judged  by 
one.  The  most  variously  accomplished  literary 
critic  in  England,  the  late  Mark  Pattison,  said 
to  me  of  certain  American  books  then  lately 
published,  "  Is  such  careful  writing  appreciated 
in  the  United  States  ?  It  would  not  be  in  Eng 
land."  On  the  shores  of  a  new  continent,  then, 
there  was  already  a  standard  which  was  in  one 
respect  better  than  the  cosmopolitan. 


A  CONTEMPORANEOUS    POSTERITY  51 

VI 
A  CONTEMPORANEOUS   POSTERITY 


nnHERE  is  an  American  novel,  now  pretty 
effectually  forgotten,  which  yet  had  the 
rare  honor  of  contributing  one  permanent  phrase 
to  English  literature.  I  remember  well  the  sur 
prise  produced,  in  my  boyhood,  by  the  appear 
ance  of  "Stanley;  or,  The  Recollections  of  a 
Man  of  the  World."  It  was  so  crammed  with 
miscellaneous  literary  allusion  and  criticism, 
after  the  fashion  of  those  days,  that  it  was  at 
tributed  by  some  critics  to  Edward  Everett,  then 
the  standing  representative  of  omniscience  in 
our  Eastern  States.  This  literary  material  was 
strung  loosely  upon  a  plot  wild  and  improbable 
enough  for  Brockden  Brown,  and  yet  vivid 
enough  to  retain  a  certain  charm,  for  me  at 
least,  even  until  this  day.  It  was  this  plot, 
perhaps,  which  led  the  late  James  T.  Fields  to 
maintain  that  Maturin  was  the  author  of  the 
novel  in  question  ;  but  it  is  now  known  to  have 
been  the  production  of  Horace  Binney  Wallace 


52      THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

of  Philadelphia,  then  a  youth  of  twenty-one. 
In  this  book  occurs  the  sentence :  "  Byron's 
European  fame  is  the  best  earnest  of  his  immor 
tality,  for  a  foreign  nation  is  a  kind  of  contem 
poraneous  posterity."  1 

Few  widely  quoted  phrases  have  had,  I  fancy, 
less  foundation.  It  is  convenient  to  imagine 
that  an  ocean  or  a  mountain  barrier,  or  even  a 
line  of  custom  houses,  may  furnish  a  sieve  that 
shall  sift  all  true  reputations  from  the  chaff ; 
but  in  fact,  I  suspect,  whatever  whims  may  vary 
or  unsettle  immediate  reputations  on  the  spot, 
these  disturbing  influences  are  only  redistrib 
uted,  not  abolished,  by  distance.  Whether  we 
look  to  popular  preference  or  to  the  judgment 
of  high  authorities,  the  result  is  equally  baf 
fling.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  preferred  Ossian,  it 
is  said,  to  Shakespeare  ;  and  Voltaire  placed  the 
latter  among  the  minor  poets,  viewing  him  at 
best  as  we  now  view  Marlowe,  as  the  author  of 
an  occasional  mighty  line.  It  was  after  Mrs. 
Elizabeth  Montagu  had  been  asked  to  hear  Vol 
taire  demolish  Shakespeare  at  an  evening  party 
in  Paris  that  she  made  her  celebrated  answer? 

i  ii.  89. 


A   CONTEMPORANEOUS   POSTERITY  53 

when  the  host  expressed  the  hope  that  she  had 
not  been  pained  by  the  criticism  :  "  Why  should 
I  be  pained  ?  I  have  not  the  honor  to  be  among 
the  intimate  friends  of  M.  de  Voltaire."  Even 
at  this  day  the  French  journalists  are  quite  be 
wildered  by  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette's  lists  of 
English  immortals ;  and  ask  who  Tennyson  is, 
and  what  plays  Ruskin  has  written.  Those 
who  happened,  like  myself,  to  be  in  Paris  dur 
ing  the  Exposition  of  1878  remember  well  the 
astonishment  produced  in  the  French  mind  by 
the  discovery  that  any  pictures  were  painted  in 
England  ;  and  the  French  Millet  was  at  that 
time  almost  as  little  known  in  London  as  was 
his  almost  namesake,  the  English  Aiillais,  in 
Paris.  If  a  foreign  nation  represented  poster 
ity,  neither  of  these  eminent  artists  appeared 
then  to  have  a  chance  of  lasting  fame. 

When  we  see  the  intellectual  separation  thus 
maintained  between  England  and  France,  with 
only  the  width  of  the  Channel  between  them, 
we  can  understand  the  separation  achieved  by 
the  Atlantic,  even  where  there  is  no  essential 
difference  of  language.  M.  Taine  tries  to  con 
vince  Frenchmen  that  the  forty  English  "  im- 


54      THE  NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

mortals "  selected  by  the  readers  of  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  are  equal,  taken  together,  to  the 
French  Academicians.  "  You  do  not  know 
them,  you  say?  "  he  goes  on.  "  That  is  not  a 
sufficient  reason.  The  English,  and  all  who 
speak  English,  know  them  well,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  know  little  of  our  men  of  letters." 
After  this  a  French  paper>  reprinting  a  similar 
English  list,  added  comments  on  the  names, 
like  this :  "  Robert  Browning,  the  Scotch  poet." 
There  is  probably  no  better  manual  of  universal 
knowledge  than  the  great  French  dictionary  of 
Larousse.  When  people  come  with  miscella 
neous  questions  to  the  Harvard  College  libra 
rians,  they  often  say  in  return,  "  Have  you 
looked  in  Larousse  ?  "  Now,  when  one  looks  in 
Larousse  to  see  who  Robert  Browning  was,  one 
finds  the  statement  that  the  genius  of  Browning 
is  more  analogous  to  that  of  his  American  con 
temporaries  "  Emerton,  Wendell  Holmes,  and 
Bigelow "  than  to  that  of  any  English  poet 
(celle  de  n'importe  quel  poete  anglais.)  This 
transformation  of  Emerson  into  Emerton,  and 
of  Lowell,  probably,  to  Bigelow,  is  hardly  more 
extraordinary  than  to  link  together  three  such 


A   CONTEMPORANEOUS   POSTERITY  55 

dissimilar  poets,  and  compare  Browning  to  all 
three  of  them,  or,  indeed,  to  either  of  the  three. 
Yet  it  gives  us  the  high-water  mark  of  what 
"contemporaneous  posterity"  has  to  offer.  The 
criticism  of  another  nation  can,  no  doubt,  offer 
some  advantages  of  its  own  —  a  fresh  pair  of 
eyes  and  freedom  from  cliques ;  but  a  foreigner 
can  be  no  judge  of  local  coloring,  whether  in 
nature  or  manners.  The  mere  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  a  nation  may  be  essential  to  a 
knowledge  of  its  art. 

So  far  as  literature  goes,  the  largest  element 
of  foreign  popularity  lies  naturally  in  some  kin 
ship  of  language.  Reputation  follows  the  line 
of  least  resistance.  The  Germanic  races  take 
naturally  to  the  literature  of  their  own  con 
geners,  and  so  with  the  Latin.  As  these  last 
have  had  precedence  in  organizing  the  social 
life  of  the  world,  so  they  still  retain  it  in  their 
literary  sway.  The  French  tongue,  in  particu 
lar,  while  ceasing  to  be  the  vehicle  of  all 
travelling  intercourse,  is  still  the  second  lan 
guage  of  all  the  world.  A  Portuguese  gentle 
man  said  once  to  a  friend  of  mine  that  he  was 
studying  French  "  in  order  to  have  something 


56      THE   NEW   WOKLD   AND    THE   NEW   BOOK 

to  read."  All  the  empire  of  Great  Britain, 
circling  the  globe,  affords  to  her  poets  or 
novelists  but  a  petty  and  insular  audience  com 
pared  with  that  addressed  by  George  Sand  or 
Victor  Hugo.  A  Roman  Catholic  convert  from 
America,  going  from  Paris  to  Rome,  and  having 
audience  with  a  former  pope,  is  said  to  have 
been  a  little  dismayed  when  his  Holiness 
instantly  inquired,  with  eager  solicitude,  as  to 
the  rumored  illness  of  Paul  de  Kock  —  the 
milder  Zola  of  the  last  generation.  In  con 
temporaneous  fame,  then,  the  mere  accident  of 
nationality  and  language  plays  an  enormous 
part ;  but  this  accident  will  clearly  have  nothing 
to  do  with  the  judgment  of  posterity. 

If  any  foreign  country  could  stand  for  a 
contemporaneous  posterity,  one  would  think  it 
might  be  a  younger  nation  judging  an  older 
one.  Yet  how  little  did  the  American  reputa 
tions  of  fifty  years  ago  afford  any  sure  predic 
tion  of  permanent  fame  in  respect  to  English 
writers  !  True,  we  gave  early  recognition  to 
Carlyle  and  Tennyson,  but  scarcely  greater 
than  to  authors  now  faded  or  fading  into  ob 
scurity, —  Milnes  (Lord  Houghton),  Sterling, 


A  CONTEMPORANEOUS   POSTERITY  57 

Trench,  Alford,  and  Bailey.  No  English  poem, 
it  was  said,  ever  sold  through  so  many  Ameri 
can  editions  as  "  Festus ; "  nor  was  Tapper's 
"Proverbial  Philosophy  "  far  behind  it.  Trans 
lators  and  publishers  quarrelled  bitterly  for  the 
privilege  of  translating  Frederika  Bremer's 
novels  ;  but  our  young  people,  who  already 
stand  for  posterity,  hardly  recall  her  name.  I 
asked  a  Swedish  commissioner  at  our  Centen 
nial  Exhibition  in  1876,  "  Is  Miss  Bremer  still 
read  in  Sweden  ?  "  He  shook  his  head ;  and 
when  I  asked,  "Who  has  replaced  her?"  he 
said,  "  Bret  Harte  and  Mark  Twain."  It  seemed 
the  irony  of  fame;  and  there  is  no  guaranty 
that  this  reversed  national  compliment  will,  any 
more  than  our  recognition  of  her,  predict  the 
judgment  of  the  future. 

If  this  uncertainty  exists  when  the  New 
World  judges  the  Old,  of  which  it  knows  some 
thing,  the  insecurity  must  be  greater  when  the 
Old  World  judges  the  New,  of  which  it  knows 
next  to  nothing.  If  the  multiplicity  of  trans 
lations  be  any  test,  Mrs.  Stowe's  contemporary 
fame,  the  world  over,  has  been  unequalled  in 
literature;  but  will  any  one  now  say  that  it 


58      THE   NEW    WORLD    AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

surely  predicts  the  judgment  of  posterity? 
Consider  the  companion  instances.  Next  to 
"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin "  ranked  for  a  season, 
doubtless,  in  European  favor,  that  exceedingly 
commonplace  novel  "  The  Lamplighter,"  whose 
very  name  is  now  almost  forgotten  at  home.  It 
is  impossible  to  say  what  law  enters  into  such 
successes  as  this  last ;  but  one  of  the  most 
obvious  demands  made  by  all  foreign  contem 
porary  judgment  is,  that  an  American  book 
should  supply  to  a  jaded  public  the  element  of 
the  unexpected.  Europe  demands  from  Amer 
ica  not  so  much  a  new  thought  and  purpose,  as 
some  new  dramatis  personce ;  that  an  author 
should  exhibit  a  wholly  untried  type,  —  an 
Indian,  as  Cooper ;  a  negro,  as  Mrs.  Stowe ;  a 
mountaineer,  as  Miss  Murfree  ;  a  California 
gambler,  as  Bret  Harte  ;  a  rough  or  roustabout, 
as  Whitman. 

There  are  commonly  two  ways  to  eminent 
social  success  for  an  American  in  foreign 
society,  —  to  be  more  European  than  Europeans 
themselves,  or  else  to  surpass  all  other  Ameri 
cans  in  some  amusing  peculiarity  which  for 
eigners  suppose  to  be  American.  It  is  much 


A   CONTEMPORANEOUS    POSTERITY  59 

the  same  in  literature.  Lady  Morgan,  describ 
ing  the  high  society  of  Dublin  in  her  day, 
speaks  of  one  man  as  a  great  favorite  who 
always  entered  every  drawing-room  by  turning 
a  somersault.  This  is  one  way  of  success  for 
an  American  book ;  but  the  other  way,  which 
is  at  least  more  dignified,  is  rarely  successful 
except  when  combined  with  personal  residence 
and  private  acquaintance.  Down  to  the  year 
1880  Lowell  was  known  in  England,  almost 
exclusively,  as  the  author  of  the  "  Biglow 
Papers,"  and  was  habitually  classed  with  Arte- 
mus  Ward  and  Josh  Billings,  except  that  his 
audience  was  smaller.  The  unusual  experience 
of  a  diplomatic  appointment  first  unveiled  to 
the  English  mind  the  all-accomplished  Lowell 
whom  we  mourn.  In  other  cases,  as  with  Pres- 
cott  and  Motley,  there  was  the  mingled  attrac 
tion  of  European  manners  and  a  European 
subject.  But  a  simple  and  home-loving  Amer 
ican,  who  writes  upon  the  themes  furnished  by 
his  own  nation,  without  pyrotechnics  or  fantas 
tic  spelling,  is  apt  to  seem  to  the  English  mind 
quite  uninteresting.  There  is  nothing  which 
ordinarily  interests  Europeans  less  than  an 


60      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

Americanism  unaccompanied  by  a  war-whoop. 
The  Saturday  Review,  wishing  to  emphasize  its 
contempt  for  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  finally  de 
clares  that  one  Avould  turn  from  him  with  relief 
even  to  the  poems  of  Whittier. 

There  could  hardly  have  been  a  more  ex 
haustive  proof  of  this  local  limitation  or  chau- 
vinisme  than  I  myself  noticed  at  a  London 
dinner-party  some  years  ago.  Our  host  was  an 
Oxford  professor,  and  the  company  was  an  emi 
nent  one.  Being  hard  pressed  about  American 
literature,  I  had  said  incidentally  that  a  great 
deal  of  intellectual  activity  in  America  was 
occupied,  and  rightly,  by  the  elucidation  of  our 
own  history,  —  a  thing,  I  added,  which  inspired 
almost  no  interest  in  England.  This  fact  being 
disputed,  I  said,  "  Let  us  take  a  test  case.  We 
have  in  America  an  historian  superior  to 
Motley  in  labors,  in  originality  of  treatment, 
and  in  style.  If  he  had,  like  Motley,  first  gone 
abroad  for  a  subject,  and  then  for  a  residence, 
his  European  fame  would  have  equalled  Mot 
ley's.  As  it  is,  probably  not  a  person  present 
except  our  host  will  recognize  his  name." 
When  I  mentioned  Francis  Parkman,  the  predic- 


A  CONTEMPORANEOUS   POSTERITY  61 

tion  was  fulfilled.  All,  save  the  host  —  a  man 
better  acquainted  with  the  United  States,  per 
haps,  than  any  living  Englishman — confessed 
utter  ignorance :  an  ignorance  shared,  it  seems, 
by  the  only  English  historian  of  American  liter 
ature,  Professor  Nichol,  who  actually  does  not 
allude  to  Parkman.  It  seems  to  me  that  we 
had  better,  in  view  of  such  facts,  dismiss  the 
theory  that  a  foreign  nation  is  a  kind  of  con 
temporaneous  posterity. 


62      THE   NEW   WOKLD   AND   THE  NEW  BOOK 

VII 
ON  LITERARY  TONICS 

OOME  minor  English  critic  wrote  lately  of 
^  Dr.  Holmes's  "  Life  of  Emerson :  "  "  The 
Boston  of  his  day  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a 
very  strong  place ;  we  lack  performance."  This 
is  doubtless  to  be  attributed  rather  to  ignorance 
than  to  that  want  of  seriousness  which  Mr. 
Stedman  so  justly  points  out  among  the  younger 
Englishmen.  The  Boston  of  which  he  speaks 
was  the  Boston  of  Garrison  and  Phillips,  of 
Whittier  and  Theodore  Parker;  it  was  the 
headquarters  of  those  old-time  abolitionists  of 
whom  the  English  Earl  of  Carlisle  wrote  that 
they  were  "  fighting  a  battle  without  a  parallel 
in  the  history  of  ancient  or  modern  heroism." 
It  was  also  the  place  which  nurtured  those  young 
Harvard  students  who  are  chronicled  in  the 
"  Harvard  Memorial  Biographies  "  —  those  who 
fell  in  the  war  of  the  Rebellion ;  those  of  whom 
Lord  Hough  ton  once  wrote  tersely  to  me: 
44  They  are  men  whom  Europe  has  learned  to 


ON   LITERARY   TONICS  63 

honor  and  would  do  well  to  imitate."  The 
service  of  all  these  men,  and  its  results,  give  a 
measure  of  the  tonic  afforded  in  the  Boston  of 
that  da}'.  Nay,  Emerson  himself  was  directly 
responsible  for  much  of  their  strength.  "  To 
him  more  than  to  all  other  causes  together," 
says  Lowell,  "  did  the  young  martyrs  of  our 
Civil  War  owe  the  sustaining  strength  of  moral 
heroism  that  is  so  touching  in  every  record  of 
their  lives."  And  when  the  force  thus  de 
veloped  in  Boston  and  elsewhere  came  to  do  its 
perfect  work,  that  work  turned  out  to  be  the 
fighting  of  a  gigantic  war  and  the  freeing  of 
four  millions  of  slaves ;  and  this  in  the  teeth  of 
every  sympathy  and  desire  of  all  that  appeared 
influential  in  England.  This  is  what  is  meant, 
in  American  history  at  least,  by  "  performance." 
Indeed,  as  the  War  of  1812  has  been  called, 
following  a  suggestion  of  Franklin's,  "  the  sec 
ond  War  for  Independence,"  so  the  Civil  Wai- 
might  be  called  in  the  same  sense  the  third  war 
of  the  same  kind;  and  the  evolution  of  the 
American  as  a  type  wholly  new  and  distinct 
from  the  Englishman,  dates  largely  from  that 
event.  We  are  sometimes  misled  bv  a  few 


64      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND    THE   NEW    BOOK 

imitations  in  respect  to  visiting  cards  and  ser 
vants'  liveries,  to  be  solicitous  about  a  revival 
of  Anglomania,  forgetting  that  the  very  word 
Anglomania  implies  separation  and  weaning.  I 
can  recall  when  there  was  no  more  room  for 
Anglomania  in  New  York  than  in  Piccadilly, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  all  was  still  English ; 
when  the  one  cultivated  newspaper  in  the  coun 
try  was  the  New  York  Albion,  conducted  for 
British  residents  ;  when  the  scene  of  every  child's 
story  was  laid  abroad  and  not  at  home ;  when 
Irving  was  read  in  America  because  he  wrote 
of  England,  and  Cooper's  novels  were  regarded 
as  a  sort  of  daring  eccentricity  of  the  frontier. 
Fifty  years  ago  Anglomania  could  scarcely  be 
said  to  exist  in  this  country ;  for  the  nation  was 
still,  for  all  purposes  of  art  and  literature,  a  mere 
province  of  England.  Now  all  is  changed ;  the 
literary  tone  of  the  United  States  is  more  serious, 
more  original,  and,  in  its  regard  for  external 
forms,  more  cultivated  than  that  now  prevailing 
on  the  other  side.  Untravelled  Americans  still 
feel  a  sense  of  awe  before  the  English  press, 
which  vanishes  when  they  visit  London  and  talk 
with  the  young  fellows  who  write  for  its  jou;\ 


ON   LITERARY   TONICS  65 

nals ;  and  when  these  youths  visit  us,  what  light 
weights  they  are  apt  to  seem ! 

Emerson  said  of  our  former  literary  allegiance 
to  England  that  it  was  the  tax  we  paid  for  the 
priceless  gift  of  English  literature  ;  but  this  tax 
should  surely  not  be  now  a  heavy  one ;  a  few 
ballades  and  villanelles  seem  the  chief  recent 
importations.  The  current  American  criticism 
on  the  latest  English  literature  is  that  it  is 
brutal  or  trivial.  The  London  correspondent  of 
the  Critic  quoted  some  Englishmen  the  other 
day  as  saying  that  the  principal  results  of  our 
Civil  War  had  been  "  the  development  of  Henry 
James,  and  the  adoption  of  Mr.  Robert  Steven 
son."  Mr.  Stevenson,  if  adopted,  can  hardly 
be  brought  into  the  discussion.  Mr.  James  has 
no  doubt  placed  himself  as  far  as  possible 
beyond  reach  of  the  Civil  War  by  keeping  the 
Atlantic  Ocean  between  him  and  the  scene 
where  it  occurred;  but  when  I  recall  that  I 
myself  saw  his  youngest  brother,  still  almost  a 
boy,  lying  near  to  death,  as  it  then  seemed,  in 
a  hospital  at  Beaufort,  S.  C.,  after  the  charge  on 
Fort  Wagner,  I  can  easily  imagine  that  the 
Civil  War  may  really  have  done  something 


66      THE  NEW   WOULD  AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

for  Mr.  James's  development,  after  all.  Mr. 
Howells  has  scarcely  yet  given  up  taking  the 
heroes  of  his  books  from  among  those  who  had 
gone  through  a  similar  ordeal,  and  it  will  be 
many  years  before  the  force  of  that  great  im 
pulse  is  spent.  For  one  thing,  the  results  of  the 
war  have  liberated  the  Southern  literary  genius, 
and  that  part  of  the  nation,  so  strangely  unpro- 
lific  till  within  twenty-five  years,  is  now  arrest 
ing  its  full  share  of  attention,  and  perhaps  even 
more  than  its  share. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  just  how  far  the  influence 
of  a  literary  tonic  extends,  and  Goethe  might 
doubtless  be  cited  as  an  instance  where  art 
was  its  own  sufficient  stimulus.  In  the  cases  of 
a  writer  like  Poe,  we  trace  no  tonic  element. 
The  great  anti-slavery  agitation  and  the  general 
reformatory  mood  of  half  a  century  ago  un 
doubtedly  gave  us  Channing,  Emerson,  Whit- 
tier,  'Longfellow,  and  Lowell ;  not  that  they 
would  not  have  been  conspicuous  in  any  case, 
but  that  the  moral  attribute  in  their  natures 
might  have  been  far  less  marked.  The  great 
temporary  fame  of  Mrs.  Stowe  was  identified 
with  the  same  influence.  Hawthorne  and 


OX   LITERARY   TONICS  67 

Holmes  were  utterly  untouched  by  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation,  yet  both  yielded  to  the  excite 
ment  of  the  war,  and  felt  in  some  degree  its 
glow.  It  elicited  from  Aldrich  his  noble  Fred- 
ericksburg  sonnet.  Stedman,  Stoddard,  and 
Bayard  Taylor  wrote  war  songs,  as  did  Julia 
Ward  Howe  conspicuously.  Whitman's  poem 
on  the  death  of  Lincoln  is,  in  my  judgment,  one 
of  the  few  among  his  compositions  which  will 
live.  Wallace,  who  must  be  regarded  as  on 
the  whole  our  most  popular  novelist  —  whatever 
may  be  thought  of  the  quality  of  his  work  — 
won  his  first  distinction  in  the  Civil  War.  Cable, 
Lanier,  Thompson,  and  other  strong  writers 
were  also  engaged  in  it,  on  the  Confederate  side. 
It  is  absolutely  impossible  to  disentangle  from 
the  work  of  any  but  the  very  youngest  of  our 
living  American  authors  that  fibre  of  iron  which 
came  from  our  great  Civil  War  and  the  stormy 
agitation  that  led  up  to  it. 

What  is  to  succeed  that  great  tonic  ?  —  for 
we  can  hardly  suppose  that  the  human  race  is 
to  be  kept  forever  at  war  for  the  sake  of  sup 
plying  a  series  of  heroic  crises.  It  is  evident 
that  no  particular  source  of  moral  stimulus  is 


68      THE  NEW   WORLD   AND  THE  NEW   BOOK 

essential ;  the  Woman  Suffrage  movement  has 
made  a  dozen  and  more  women  into  orators  and 
authors ;  and  Helen  Jackson  was  as  thoroughly 
thrilled  and  inspired  by  the  wrongs  of  the  Ameri 
can  Indians,  as  was  Mrs.  Stowe  by  those  of  the 
Negroes.  The  American  writers  who  signed 
the  petition  for  the  pardon  of  the  Chicago 
Anarchists,  had  at  least  the  wholesome  experi 
ence  of  standing  firmly,  whether  they  were  right 
or  wrong,  against  the  current  opinion  of  those 
around  them.  The  contributions  toward  the 
discussion  of  social  questions  which  have  of  late 
flowed  so  freely  from  clergymen  and  other  non 
experts,  must  undoubtedly  do  good  to  those 
from  whom  they  proceed,  if  to  no  others.  The 
essential  thing  is  that  the  literary  man  should 
be  interested  in  something  which  he  feels  to  be 
of  incomparably  more  importance  to  the  uni 
verse  than  the  development  of  his  own  pretty 
talent.  We  see  the  same  thing  across  the  ocean, 
when  Swinburne  writes  his  "  Song  in  Time  of 
Order,"  and  Morris  marches  in  a  Socialist  pro 
cession.  Here  lies  the  power  of  the  Russian 
writers,  of  Victor  Hugo.  Probably  no  man  who 
ever  lived  had  an  egotism  more  colossal  than 


ON   LITERARY   TONICS  69 

that  of  Hugo,  yet  he  was  large  enough  to  sub 
ordinate  even  that  egotism  to  the  aims  that 
absorbed  him  —  to  abhorrence  of  Napoleon  the 
Little  —  to  enthusiasm  for  the  golden  age  of 
man.  I  like  to  think  of  him  as  I  saw  him  at  the 
Voltaire  Centenary  in  1876,  pleading  for  Uni 
versal  Peace  amid  the  alternate  hush  and  roar 
of  thousands  of  excitable  Parisians  —  his  lion- 
like  head  erect,  his  strong  hand  uplifted,  his 
voice  still  powerful  at  nearly  eighty  years.  So 
vast  was  the  crowd,  so  deserted  the  neighbor 
ing  streets,  that  it  all  recalled  the  words  put  by 
Landor  into  the  lips  of  Demosthenes  :  "  I  have 
seen  the  day  when  the  most  august  of  cities 
had  but  one  voice  within  her  walls ;  and  when 
the  stranger  on  entering  them  stopped  at  the 
silence  of  the  gateway,  and  said,  '  Demosthenes 
is  speaking  in  the  assembly  of  the  people.' ' 


70      THE   NEW  WOULD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

VIII 
THE  FEAR  OF  THE  DEAD  LEVEL 


FT  is  noticeable  i  X.  foreign  observers,  who 
were  always  a  little  xious  about  the  pos 
sible  monotony  of  our  society,  nave  grown  a  little 
more  so  since  they  have  ventured  west  of  the 
Alleghanies  and  crossed  the  long  plain  to  be 
traversed  before  reaching  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
In  the  days  when  an  American  trip  culminated 
at  Niagara,  and  even  Trenton  Falls  was  con 
sidered  a  sight  so  remarkable  that  Charles 
Sumner  wrote  from  England  to  caution  a 
traveller  by  no  means  to  quit  the  country 
without  seeing  it,  there  was  no  complaint  that 
our  scenery  was  monotonous.  The  continent 
was  supposed  to  have  done  all,  in  that  line, 
which  could  fairly  be  asked  of  it.  Since  then, 
the  criticism  has  grown  with  the  railway  jour 
ney,  and  people  fear  that  the  horizontal  line  of 
the  prairies  must  more  than  counterbalance  the 
vertical  line  of  Niagara,  in  moulding  the  Ameri 
can  mind.  Then  these  very  travellers  are  justly 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  DEAD  LEVEL     71 

anxious  about  the  sameness  of  our  cities ;  the 
streets  numbered  one  way,  the  avenues  the 
other.  '•  Can  the  young  heart,"  they  ask, 
"attach  definite  associations  or  tender  emotions 
with  an  Arabic  figure?  Is  there  romance  in 
numeration?"  Probably  they  carry  the  criticism 
too  far.  As  Nature,  according  to  Emerson, 
loves  the  number  five,  so  does  the  well-bred 
New  Yorker.  Surely  "  Fifth  Avenue  "  has  as 
definite  and  distinctive  a  meaning  for  him  as  if 
there  were  no  other  number  in  the  universe ; 
and  I  am  sure  that  in  every  city  there  is  some 
youth  who  cannot  look  up  at  the  street-sign 
denoting  some  Twenty-third  Street  or  Thirty- 
fifth  Street  without  a  slight  spasm  of  the  heart. 
Such  associations  last  a  great  while,  even  if  the 
street  be  disagreeable  :  the  philosopher  Des 
cartes  was  enamored  in  his  youth  with  a  young 
lady  who  squinted  a  little,  and  it  is  said  that  he 
never  through  life  could  behold  without  the 
tenderest  emotion  a  woman  having  a  cast  in  her 
eye.  If  Descartes  was  permanently  sentimental 
about  orbs  that  were  crooked,  cannot  others  be 
so  about  streets  that  are  straight  ? 

Still,  in  the  long  run,  monotony  is  not  satis- 


72   THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

fying ;  and  the  kind  traveller  hastens  to  con 
ciliate  local  pride  by  granting  some  individuality 
to  a  few  cities,  such  as  New  York,  Washington, 
Chicago,  New  Orleans,  Boston.  It  is  very 
possible  that  a  closer  student  of  this  particular 
point  might  find  less  monotony,  even  among 
towns,  than  he  does.  In  Mr.  Warner's  late 
studies  of  American  cities,  for  instance,  we  are 
struck,  not  with  the  sameness,  but  with  the 
variety.  Much  depends  upon  the  trained  eye. 
A  long  railway  trip  across  a  level  plain  is 
monotonous  to  one  who  is  looking  for  bold 
scenery ;  but  it  may  not  be  monotonous  to  the 
agriculturist  who  is  studying  the  crops,  or  to 
the  botanist  who  is  looking  out  for  trees  and 
wild  flowers,  or  to  the  student  of  human  nature 
who  is  watching  for  new  types  of  character.  So 
an  exhibition  of  machinery  is  monotonous  to  the 
ignorant,  but  full  of  knowledge  to  the  expert ; 
and  there  was  a  capital  illustration  in  Punch  at 
the  time  of  the  first  International  Exposition  in 
London,  showing  the  difference  between  a 
group  of  bored  fashionables,  passing  languidly 
through  the  hall  devoted  to  new  inventions,  and 
a  party  of  intelligent  mechanics  eagerly  exam- 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  DEAD  LEVEL     73 

ining  a  machine.  So  of  human  beings :  to  a 
raw  officer  of  colored  troops,  for  instance,  in  the 
Civil  War,  his  men  looked  hopelessly  alike  as 
they  stood  uniformed  in  line ;  but  he  soon  found 
that  every  face  had  its  individuality.  I  have 
even  heard  teachers  say  the  same  of  a  new  class, 
black  or  white,  on  its  entering  school.  Living 
in  a  college  town,  I  find  the  young  men  looking 
so  much  the  same,  so  long  as  I  do  not  know 
them,  as  to  suggest  the  wish  expressed  by 
Humpty  Dumpty  to  Alice,  that  some  human 
beings  could  be  constructed  with  their  features 
differently  combined  —  the  noses,  for  instance, 
being  sometimes  put  above  the  eyebrows  —  in 
order  to  distinguish  them  more  conspicuously. 
Yet  each  one  becomes  on  acquaintance  a  per 
fectly  defined  personality  ;  and  it  is  complained 
by  their  professors  that  there  is  sometimes 
rather  an  excess  of  individuality,  when  it  comes 
to  discipline. 

It  turns  out,  then,  that  individuality  depends 
largely  on  the  observer.  Thoreau  points  out 
that  no  two  oak-leaves  are  precisely  alike ;  and 
Scudder  says  the  same  of  the  markings  on 
butterflies'  wings.  Alexander  von  Humboldt 


74      THE  NEW   WOKLD   AND   THE  NEW   BOOK 

remarked  that  this  trait  develops  with  civili 
zation  ;  a  hundred  wild  dogs  are  more  alike 
than  their  domesticated  kindred,  and  so  of  a 
hundred  wild  men.  If  the  step  we  have  taken 
in  America,  away  from  courts  and  hereditary 
institutions,  be  a  step  in  civilization,  then  it  is 
certainly  to  lead  to  more  individuality,  not  less. 
Even  in  England,  where  is  marked  individuality 
to  be  found  ?  Surely,  among  the  men  who  have 
made  the  name  of  England  great ;  her  artists, 
authors,  inventors,  scientific  teachers.  Yet  Mr. 
Besant  has  lately  pointed  out,  in  a  very  impres 
sive  passage,  that  scarcely  one  of  these  men 
ever  went  near  the  court  of  England.  The 
marked  individuality  of  that  nation,  therefore, 
is  distinctly  outside  of  the  court  circle  ;  and,  if 
so,  individuality  would  gain  and  not  lose  by 
dropping  those  circles  altogether.  The  diffi 
culty  is  that  the  court  circle  substitutes  for 
this  quality  a  mere  variation  of  costume  —  a 
robe,  a  decoration.  But  in  reality  these  things 
subdue  individuality,  instead  of  developing  it ; 
as  every  recruiting  officer  found,  during  our 
Civil  War,  that  recruits  became  more  docile  the 
moment  they  put  on  the  uniform;  and  a  lady 


THE  FEAR  OF  THE  DEAD  LEVEL      To 

at  Newport  once  vindicated  to  me  the  desirable 
ness  of  liveries  on  the  ground  that  they  were 
"very  repressive."  In  persons  of  higher  grade 
in  England  there  is  developed  the  official  —  the 
Lord  Chamberlain,  the  Lord  of  the  Hounds  ;  or 
the  typical  hereditary  lord,  in  perhaps  two  dif 
ferent  types,  "  the  wicked  lord,"  and  "  the  good 
lord ; "  but  there  is  no  added  development  of 
the  individual. 

It  all  comes  to  this,  then,  that  for  the  develop 
ment  of  individuality  you  must  have  a  free 
career;  and  the  guarantee  of  freedom  is  the 
first  step  toward  what  you  seek.  Nowhere  will 
you  find  a  more  racy  personality  than  among 
New  England  farmers,  whose  fathers  lived 
before  them  on  the  same  soil,  or  perhaps  six 
generations  of  ancestors,  and  who,  among  all 
restrictions  of  hard  soil  and  severe  competition, 
have  yet  kept  their  separate  characteristics.  I 
have  spent  summer  after  summer  in  the  country, 
and  have  never  yet  encountered  two  farmers 
alike  —  two  who  would  not,  even  if  drawn  by 
an  unsympathetic  though  acute  observer  like 
Howells,  stand  out  on  the  canvas  with  as 
marked  an  individuality  as  Silas  Lapham.  It 


76      THE   NEW    WOKLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

is  so  with  our  native-born  population  generally. 
In  the  best  volume  of  New  England  stories  ever 
written — -it  is  perhaps  needless  to  say  that  I 
refer  to  "  Five  Hundred  Dollars  a  Year  and 
Other  Stories,"  by  Mr.  H.  W.  Chaplin  —  there 
is  an  inimitable  scene  in  a  jury-room  where  the 
hero,  "Eli,"  holds  out  during  many  hours  for  the 
innocence  of  a  wronged  man.  The  jurymen  are 
commonplace  personages  enough  —  a  sea  cap 
tain,  a 'butcher,  a  pedler,  and  so  on — and  yet 
their  talk  through  page  after  page  brings  out 
in  each  a  type  of  character  so  vivid  and  distinct 
that  you  feel  sure  that  you  would  know  each 
interlocutor  afterward,  if  you  met  him  in  the 
street.  He  who  approaches  human  nature  in 
such  a  spirit  need  have  no  fear  of  the  dead 
level. 


DO   WE   NEED   A   LITERARY  CENTRE?       77 

IX 

DO   WE  NEED  A  LITERARY  CENTRE? 

TN  the  latter  days  of  the  last  French  Empire 
some  stir  was  made  by  a  book  claiming  that 
Paris  was  already  the  capital  of  the  world  — 
Paris  capitate  du  monde.  Mr.  Lowell  has  lately 
made  claims  rather  more  moderate  for  London, 
suggesting  that  a  time  may  come  when  the 
English-speaking  race  will  practically  control 
the  planet,  having  London  for  its  centre,  with 
all  roads  leading  to  it,  as  they  once  led  to 
Rome.  But  it  is  plain  that  in  making  this 
estimate  Mr.  Lowell  overlooked  some  very 
essential  factors  — for  instance,  himself.  If 
ancient  Rome  had  borrowed  for  its  most  im 
portant  literary  addresses  an  orator  from  Paph- 
lagonia,  who  was  not  even  a  Roman  citizen,  it 
would  plainly  have  ceased  to  be  the  Rome  of 
our  reverence ;  and  yet  this  is  what  has  re 
peatedly  been  done  in  London  by  the  selection 
of  Mr.  Lowell.  Or  if  the  province  of  Britain 
had  furnished  a  periodical  publication  —  an  Acta 


78      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

Eruditorum,  let  us  say  —  which  had  been  regu 
larly  reprinted  in  Rome  with  a  wider  circula 
tion  than  any  metropolitan  issue,  then  Rome 
would  again  have  ceased  to  be  Rome ;  and  yet 
this  is  what  is  done  in  London  every  month  by 
the  American  illustrated  magazines.  It  is 
clear,  then,  that  London  is  not  the  exclusive 
intellectual  centre  of  the  English-speaking 
world,  nor  is  there  the  slightest  evidence  that 
it  is  becoming  more  and  more  such  a  centre. 
On  the  contrary,  one  hears  in  England  a  pro 
longed  groan  over  an  imagined  influence  the 
other  way.  "I  have  long  felt,"  wrote  Sir 
Frederick  Elliot  to  Sir  Henry  Taylor  from 
London  (December  20,  1877),  "  that  the  most 
certain  of  political  tendencies  in  England  is 
what,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  I  will  call  the 
Yankeeizing  tendency."  But  apart  from  these 
suggestions  as  to  London,  Mr.  Lowell  has 
urged  and  urged  strongly  the  need  of  a  na 
tional  capital.  He  has  expressed  the  wish  for 
"  a  focus  of  intellectual,  moral,  and  material 
activity,"  "  a  common  head,  as  well  as  a  com 
mon  body."  In  this  he  errs  only,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  in  applying  too  readily  to  our  vaster  con- 


DO   WE   NEED   A  LITERARY   CENTRE?        79 

ditions  the  standards  and  traditions  of  much 
smaller  countries.  If  it  be  true,  as  was  said  the 
other  day  by  our  eloquent  English-born  clergy 
man  in  New  York,  Dr.  Rainsford,  that  America 
is  a  branch  which  is  rapidly  becoming  the  main 
stem,  then  the  fact  may  as  well  be  recognized. 
As  in  our  political  system,  so  in  literature,  we 
may  need  a  new  plan  of  structure  for  that  which 
is  to  embrace  a  continent  —  a  system  of  co-ordi 
nate  states  instead  of  a  centralized  empire.  Our 
literature,  like  our  laws,  will  probably  proceed 
not  from  one  focus,  but  from  many.  To  one 
looking  across  from  London  or  Paris  this  would 
seem  impossible,  for  while  living  in  a  great  city 
you  come  to  feel  as  if  that  spot  were  all  the 
world,  and  all  else  must  be  abandoned,  as  Cher- 
buliez's  heroine  says,  to  the  indiscreet  curiosity 
of  geographers.  But  when  you  again  look  at 
that  city  from  across  the  ocean,  you  perceive 
how  easily  it  may  cramp  and  confine  those  who 
live  in  it,  and  you  are  grateful  for  elbow-room 
and  fresh  air.  Nothing  smaller  than  a  conti 
nent  can  really  be  large  enough  to  give  space 
for  the  literature  of  the  future. 

It  is  to  be  considered  that  in  this  age  great 


80      THE  NEW   WOULD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

cities  do  not  exhibit,  beyond  a  certain  point, 
the  breadth  of  atmosphere  that  one  expects 
from  a  world's  capital.  On  the  contrary,  we 
find  in  Paris,  in  Berlin,  in  London,  a  certain 
curious  narrowness,  an  immense  exaggeration 
of  its  own  petty  and  local  interests.  We  meet 
there  individual  men  of  extraordinary  knowl 
edge  in  this  or  that  direction,  but  the  inter 
change  of  thought  and  feeling  seems  to  lie 
within  a  ring-fence.  A  good  test  of  this  is  in 
the  recent  books  of  "  reminiscences  "  or  "  re 
membrances  "  by  accomplished  men  who  have 
lived  for  years  in  the  most  brilliant  circles  of 
London.  Each  day  is  depicted  as  a  string  of 
pearls,  but  with  only  the  names  of  the  pearls 
mentioned  ;  the  actual  jewels  are  not  forthcom 
ing.  A  man  breakfasts  with  one  circle  of  wits 
and  sages,  lunches  with  another,  dines  with  a 
third ;  and  all  this  intellectual  affluence  yields 
him  for  his  diary  perhaps  a  single  anecdote  or 
repartee  no  better  than  are  to  be  found  by 
dozens  in  the  corners  of  American  country 
newspapers.  It  recalls  what  a  clever  American 
artist  once  told  me,  that  he  had  dined  tri 
umphantly  through  three  English  counties,  and 


DO    WE   NEED    A   LITERARY   CENTRE?        81 

brought  away  a  great  social  reputation,  on  the 
strength  of  the  stories  in  one  old  "  Farmer's 
Almanac "  which  he  had  put  in  his  trunk  to 
protect  some  books  on  leaving  home.  The  very 
excess  or  congestion  of  intellect  in  a  great  city 
seems  to  defeat  itself;  there  is  no  time  or 
strength  left  for  anything  beyond  the  most 
superficial  touch-and-go  intercourse ;  it  is  persi 
flage  carried  to  the  greatest  perfection,  but  you 
get  little  more. 

A  great  metropolis  is  moreover  disappointing, 
because,  although  it  may  furnish  great  men,  its 
literary  daily  bread  is  inevitably  supplied  by 
small  men,  who  revolve  round  the  larger  ones, 
and  who  are  even  less  interesting  to  the  visitor 
than  the  same  class  at  home.  There  is  some 
thing  amusing  in  the  indifference  of  every  special 
neighborhood  to  all  literary  gossip  except  its 
own.  For  instance,  one  might  well  have  sup 
posed  that  the  admiration  of  Englishmen  for 
Longfellow  might  inspire  an  intelligent  desire 
to  know  something  of  his  daily  interests,  of  his 
friendships  and  pursuits  ;  yet  wrhen  his  Memoirs 
appeared,  all  English  critics  pronounced  these 
things  exceedingly  uninteresting :  while  much 


82      THE   NEW   WOULD   AND   THE  NEW   BOOK 

smaller  gossip  about  much  smaller  people,  in 
the  Hay  ward  Memoirs,  was  found  by  these  same 
critics  to  be  an  important  addition  to  the  history 
of  the  times.  It  is  an  absolute  necessity  for 
every  nation,  as  for  every  age,  to  insist  on  set 
ting  its  own  standard,  even  to  the  resolute  re 
adjustment  of  well-established  reputations.  So 
long  as  it  does  not,  it  will  find  itself  overawed 
and  depressed,  not  as  much  by  the  greatness  of 
some  metropolis,  as  by  its  littleness. 

It  is  the  calamity  of  a  large  city  that  its 
smallest  men  appear  to  themselves  important 
simply  because  they  dwell  there ;  just  as  Trav- 
ers,  the  New  York  wit,  explained  his  stutter 
ing  more  in  that  city  than  in  Baltimore,  on 
the  ground  that  it  was  a  larger  place.  The 
London  literary  journals  seem  to  an  American 
visitor  to  be  largely  filled  with  Epistolce  obscuro- 
rum  virorum  ;  and  when  I  attended,  some  years 
since,  the  first  meetings  of  the  Association 
Litteraire  Internationale  in  Paris,  it  was  impos 
sible  not  to  be  impressed  by  the  multitude  of 
minor  literary  personages,  among  whom  a  writer 
so  •  mediocre  as  Edmond  About  towered  as  a 
giant.  But  no  doubts  of  their  own  supreme 


DO    WE   NEED    A    LITERARY   CENTRE?        83 

importance  to  the  universe  appeared  to  beset 
these  young  gentlemen :  — 

"  How  many  thousand  never  heard  the  name 
Of  Sidney  or  of  Spenser,  or  their  books  ? 
And  yet  brave  fellows,  and  presume  of  fame, 
And  think  to  bear  down  all  the  world  with  looks." 

One  was  irresistibly  reminded,  in  their  society, 
of  these  lines  of  old  Daniel ;  or  of  the  comfort 
able  self-classification  of  another  Frenchman, 
M.  Vestris,  the  dancer,  who  always  maintained 
that  there  were  but  three  really  great  men  in 
Europe  —  Voltaire,  Frederick  II.,  and  himself. 
We  talk  about  small  places  as  being  Little  Ped- 
lingtons,  but  it  sometimes  seems  as  if  the  Great 
Pedlingtons  were  the  smallest,  after  all,  because 
there  is  nobody  to  teach  them  humility.  Little 
Pedlington  at  least  shows  itself  apologetic  and 
even  uneasy ;  that  is  what  saves  it  to  reason  and 
common-sense.  But  fancy  a  Parisian  apologiz 
ing  for  Paris  ! 

The  great  fear  of  those  who  demand  an  intel 
lectual  metropolis  is  provincialism;  but  we 
must  remember  that  the  word  is  used  in  two 
wholly  different  senses,  which  have  nothing  in 
common.  What  an  American  understands  by 


84      THE  NEW   WORLD   AND  THE   NEW   BOOK 

provincialism  is  best  to  be  seen  in  the  little 
French  town,  some  imaginary  Tarascon  or  Car 
cassonne,  where  the  notary  and  the  physician 
and  the  rentiers  sit  and  play  dominoes  and 
feebly  disport  themselves  in  a  benumbed  world 
of  petty  gossip.  But  what  the  Parisian  or  the 
Londoner  would  assume  to  be  provincial  among 
us  is  an  American  town,  perhaps  of  the  same  size, 
but  which  has  already  its  schools  and  its  public 
library  well  established,  and  is  now  aiming  at 
a  gallery  of  art  and  a  conservatory  of  music. 
To  confound  these  opposite  extremes  of  devel 
opment  under  one  name  is  like  confounding 
childhood  and  second  childhood ;  the  one  repre 
senting  all  promise,  the  other  all  despair.  Mr. 
Henry  James,  who  proves  his  innate  kindness 
of  heart  by  the  constancy  with  which  he  is  al 
ways  pitying  somebody,  turns  the  full  fervor  of 
his  condolence  on  Hawthorne  for  dwelling  amid 
the  narrowing  influences  of  a  Concord  atmos 
phere.  But  if  those  influences  gave  us  "The 
Scarlet  Letter"  and  Emerson's  "Essays,"  does 
it  not  seem  almost  a  pity  that  we  cannot  extend 
that  same  local  atmosphere,  as  President  Lin 
coln  proposed  to  do  with  Grant's  whiskey,  to 
some  of  our  other  generals  ? 


DO   WE   NEED   A   LITERARY  CENTRE?        85 

The  dweller  in  a  metropolis  has  the  advan 
tage,  if  such  it  be,  of  writing  immediately  for 
a  few  thousand  people,  all  whose  prejudices  he 
knows  and  perhaps  shares.  He  writes  to  a 
picked  audience ;  but  he  who  dwells  in  a  coun 
try  without  a  metropolis  has  the  immeasurably 
greater  advantage  of  writing  for  an  audience 
which  is,  so  to  speak,  unpicked,  and  wrhich, 
therefore,  includes  the  picked  one,  as  an  apple 
includes  its  core.  One  does  not  need  to  be  a 
very  great  author  in  America  to  find  that  his 
voice  is  heard  across  a  continent  —  a  thing  more 
stimulating  and  more  impressive  to  the  imagi 
nation  than  the  morning  drum-beat  of  Great 
Britain.  The  whole  vast  nation,  but  a  short 
time  since,  was  simultaneously  following  the 
"  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,"  or  "  The  Casting  Away 
of  Mrs.  Leeks  and  Mrs.  Aleshine."  In  a  few 
years  the  humblest  of  the  next  generation  of 
writers  will  be  appealing  to  a  possible  constit 
uency  of  a  hundred  millions.  He  who  writes 
for  a  metropolis  may  unconsciously  share  its 
pettiness ;  he  who  writes  for  a  hundred  millions 
must  feel  some  expansion  in  his  thoughts,  even 
though  his  and  theirs  be  still  crude.  Keats 


86      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

asked  his  friend  to  throw  a  copy  of  "  Endymion  " 
into  the  heart  of  the  African  desert;  is  it  not 
better  to  cast  your  book  into  a  vaster  region 
that  is  alive  with  men  ? 

Cliques  lose  their  seeming  importance  where 
one  has  the  human  heart  at  his  door.  That 
calamity  which  Fontenelle  mourned,  the  loss  of 
so  many  good  things  by  their  being  spoken  only 
into  the  ear  of  some  fool,  can  never  happen  to 
what  is  written  for  a  whole  continent.  There 
will  be  a  good  auditor  somewhere,  and  the 
farther  off,  the  more  encouraging.  When  your 
sister  or  your  neighbor  praises  your  work,  they 
may  be  suspected  of  partiality;  when  the  news 
papers  commend,  the  critic  may  be  very  friendly 
or  very  juvenile ;  but  when  the  post  brings  you 
a  complimentary  letter  from  a  new-born  village 
in  Colorado,  you  become  conscious  of  an  audi 
ence.  Now,  suppose  the  intellectual  aspirations 
of  that  frontier  village  to  be  so  built  up  by 
schools,  libraries,  and  galleries  that  it  shall  be 
a  centre  of  thought  and  civilization  for  the 
whole  of  Colorado,  —  a  State  which  is  in  itself 
about  the  size  of  Great  Britain  or  Italy,  and 
half  the  size  of  Germany  or  France,  —  and  we 


DO   WE   NEED   A   LITERARY   CENTRE?         87 

shall  have  a  glimpse  at  a  state  of  things  worth 
more  than  a  national  metropolis.  The  collec 
tive  judgment  of  a  series  of  smaller  tribunals 
like  this  will  ultimately  be  worth  more  to  an 
author,  or  to  a  literature,  than  that  of  London 
or  Paris.  History  gives  us,  in  the  Greek 
states,  the  Italian  Republics,  the  German  uni 
versity  towns,  some  examples  of  such  a  concur 
rent  intellectual  jurisdiction;  but  they  missed 
the  element  of  size,  the  element  of  democratic 
freedom,  the  element  of  an  indefinite  future. 
All  these  are  ours. 


88      THE  NEW   WOULD   AND   THE  NEW  BOOK 


X 

THE   EQUATION   OF   FAME 

aim  of  all  criticism  is  really  to  solve 
the  equation  of  fame  and  to  find  what  lit 
erary  work  is  of  real  value.  For  convenience, 
the  critic  assumes  the  attitude  of  infallibility. 
He  really  knows  better  in  his  own  case,  being 
commonly  an  author  also.  The  curious  thing 
is  that,  by  a  sort  of  comity  of  the  profession, 
the  critic  who  is  an  author  assumes  that  other 
critics  are  infallible  also,  or  at  least  a  body 
worthy  of  vast  deference.  He  is  as  sensitive  to 
the  praise  or  blame  of  his  contemporaries  as  he 
would  have  them  toward  himself.  He  bows  his 
head  before  the  "London  Press"  or  the  "New 
York  Press  "  as  meekly  as  if  he  did  not  know 
full  well  that  these  august  bodies  are  made  up 
of  just  such  weak  and  unstable  mortals  as  he 
knows  himself  to  be.  At  the  Saville  Club  in 
London  an  American  is  introduced  to  some 
beardless  youth,  and  presently,  when  some 
slashing  criticism  is  mentioned,  in  the  Academy 


THE   EQUATION   OF   FAME  89 

or  the  Saturday  Review,  the  fact  incidentally 
comes  out  that  his  companion  happened  to  write 
that  very  article.  "Xever  again,"  the  visitor 
thinks,  "shall  I  be  any  more  awed  by  what  I 
read  in  those  periodicals  than  if  it  had  appeared 
in  my  village  newspaper  at  home."  But  he 
goes  his  way,  and  in  a  month  is  looking  with 
as  much  deference  as  ever  for  the  "  verdict  of 
the  London  Press."  It  seems  a  tribute  to  the 
greatness  of  our  common  nature  that  the  most 
ordinary  individuals  have  weight  with  us  as 
soon  as  there  are  enough  of  them  to  get  to 
gether  in  a  jury-box,  or  even  in  a  newspaper 
office,  and  pronounce  a  decision.  As  Chan 
cellor  Oxenstiern  sent  the  young  man  on  his 
travels  to  see  with  how  little  wisdom  the  world 
was  governed,  so  it  is  worth  while  for  every 
young  writer  to  visit  New  York  or  London,  that 
he  may  see  with  how  little  serious  consideration 
his  work  will  be  criticised.  The  only  advan 
tage  conferred  by  added  years  in  authorship  is 
that  one  learns  this  lesson  a  little  better,  though 
the  oldest  author  never  learns  it  very  well. 

But  apart  from  all  drawbacks  in  the  way  of 
haste   and  shallowness,   there    is  a  profounder 


90      THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

difficulty  which  besets  the.  most  careful  critical 
work.  It  inevitably  takes  the  color  of  the 
time;  its  study  of  the  stars  is  astrology,  not 
astronomy,  to  adopt  Thoreau's  distinction. 
Heine  points  out,  in  his  essay  on  German 
Romanticism,  that  we  greatly  err  in  supposing 
that  Goethe's  early  fame  bore  much  comparison 
with  his  deserts.  He  was,  indeed,  praised  for 
"Werther"  and  "Gotz  von  Berlichingen,"  but 
the  romances  of  August  La  Fontaine  were  in 
equal  demand,  and  the  latter,  being  a  volu 
minous  writer,  was  much  more  in  men's  mouths. 
The  poets  of  the  period  were  Wieland  and 
Ramler;  and  Kotzebue  and  Iffland  ruled  the 
stage.  Even  forty  years  ago,  I  remember  well, 
it  was  considered  an  open  subject  of  discussion 
whether  Goethe  or  Schiller  was  the  greater 
name;  and  Professor  Felton  of  Harvard  Uni 
versity  took  the  pains  to  translate  a  long  his 
tory  of  German  literature  by  Menzel,  the  one 
object  of  which  was  to  show  that  Goethe  was 
quite  a  secondary  figure,  and  not  destined  to 
any  lasting  reputation.  It  was  one  of  the 
objections  to  Margaret  Fuller,  in  the  cultivated 
Cambridge  circle  of  that  day,  that  she  spoke 


THE    EQUATION    OF    FAME  91 

disrespectfully  of  Menzel  in  the  Dial,  and  called 
him  a  Philistine  —  the  first  introduction  into 
English,  so  far  as  I  know,  of  that  word  since 
familiarized  by  Arnold  and  others. 

We  fancy  France  to  be  a  place  where,  if 
governments  are  changeable,  literary  fame, 
fortified  by  academies,  rests  on  sure  ground. 
But  Thdophile  Gautier,  in  the  preface  to  his 
"Les  Grotesques,"  says  just  the  contrary.  He 
declares  that  in  Paris  all  praise  or  blame  is 
overstated,  because,  in  order  to  save  the  trouble 
of  a  serious  opinion,  they  take  up  one  writer 
temporarily  in  order  to  get  rid  of  the  rest. 
"There  are,"  he  goes  on,  "strange  fluctuations 
in  reputations,  and  aureoles  change  heads. 
After  death,  illuminated  foreheads  are  extin 
guished  and  obscure  brows  grow  bright.  Pos 
terity  means  night  for  some,  dawn  to  others." 
Who  wrould  to-day  believe,  he  asks,  that  the 
obscure  writer  Chapelain  passed  for  long  years 
as  the  greatest  poet,  not  alone  of  France,  but 
the  whole  world  (le  plus  grand  poete,  non-seule- 
ment  de  France,  mais  du  monde  entier),  and 
that  nobody  less  potent  than  the  Duchesse  de 
Longueville  would  have  dared  to  go  to  sleep 


92      THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE    NEW  BOOK 

over  his  poem  of  "La  Pucelle" ?  Yet  this  was 
in  the  time  of  Corneille,  Racine,  Moliere,  and 
La  Fontaine. 

Heine  points  out  that  it  is  not  enough  for 
a  poet  to  utter  his  own  sympathies,  he  must  also 
reach  those  of  his  audience.  The  audience,  he 
thinks,  is  often  like  some  hungry  Bedouin  Arab 
in  the  desert,  who  thinks  he  has  found  a  sack 
of  pease  and  opens  it  eagerly;  but,  alas!  they 
are  only  pearls!  With  what  discontent  did 
the  audience  of  Emerson's  day  inspect  his  pre 
cious  stones!  Even  now  Matthew  Arnold 
shakes  his  head  over  them  and  finds  Longfel 
low's  little  sentimental  poem  of  "The  Bridge" 
worth  the  whole  of  Emerson.  When  we  con 
sider  that  Byron  once  accepted  meekly  his  own 
alleged  inferiority  to  Rogers,  and  that  Southey 
ranked  himself  with  Milton  and  Virgil,  and 
only  with  half-reluctant  modesty  placed  him 
self  below  Homer;  that  Miss  Anna  Seward  and 
her  contemporaries  habitually  spoke  of  Hayley 
as  "  the  Mighty  Bard,"  and  passed  over  without 
notice  Hayley's  eccentric  dependant,  William 
Blake ;  that  but  two  volumes  of  Thoreau's  writ 
ings  were  published,  greatly  to  his  financial 


THE   EQUATION    OF   FAME  93 

loss,  during  his  lifetime,  and  eight  others, 
with  four  biographies  of  him,  since  his  death ; 
that  Willis's  writings  came  into  instant  accept 
ance,  while  Hawthorne's,  according  to  their 
early  publisher,  attracted  "no  attention  what 
ever;"  that  Willis  indeed  boasted  to  Longfel 
low  of  making  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year  by 
his  pen,  when  Longfellow  wished  that  he  could 
earn  one-tenth  of  that  amount.  —  we  must  cer 
tainly  admit  that  the  equation  of  fame  may 
require  many  years  for  its  solution.  Fuller 
says  in  his  "*  Holy  State  "'  that  "  learning  hath 
gained  most  by  those  books  on  which  the  print 
ers  have  lost;"'  and  if  this  is  true  of  learning, 
it  is  far  truer  of  that  incalculable  and  often 
perplexing  gift  called  genius. 

Young  Americans  write  back  from  London 
that  they  wish  they  had  gone  there  in  the 
palmy  days  of  literary  society  —  in  the  days 
when  Dickens  and  Thackeray  were  yet  alive, 
and  when  Tennyson  and  Browning  were  in 
their  prime,  instead  of  waiting  until  the  pres 
ent  period,  when  Rider  Haggard  and  Oscar 
Wilde  are  regarded,  they  say,  as  serious  and 
important  authors.  But  just  so  men  looked 


94      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

back  in  longing  from  that  earlier  day  to  the 
period  of  Scott  and  Wordsworth,  and  so  farther 
and  farther  and  farther.  It  is  easy  for  older 
men  to  recall  when  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
were  in  some  measure  obscured  by  now  forgot 
ten  contemporaries,  like  Harrison  Ainsworth 
and  G.  P.  R.  James,  and  when  one  was  gravely 
asked  whether  he  preferred  Tennyson  to  Ster 
ling  or  Trench  or  Alford  or  Faber  or  Milnes. 
It  is  to  me  one  of  the  most  vivid  reminiscences 
of  my  Harvard  College  graduation  (in  1841) 
that,  having  rashly  ventured  upon  a  commence 
ment  oration  whose  theme  was  "  Poetry  in  an 
Unpoetical  Age,"  I  closed  with  an  urgent  ap 
peal  to  young  poets  to  "  lay  down  their  Spenser 
and  Tennyson,"  and  look  into  life  for  them 
selves.  Prof.  Edward  T.  Channing,  then  the 
highest  literary  authority  in  New  England, 
paused  in  amazement  with  uplifted  pencil  over 
this  combination  of  names.  "  You  mean,"  he 
said,  "that  they  should  neither  defer  to  the 
highest  authority  nor  be  influenced  by  the 
lowest?"  When  I  persisted,  with  the  zeal  of 
seventeen,  that  I  had  no  such  meaning,  but 
regarded  them  both  as  among  the  gods,  he  said 


THE   EQUATION   OF   FAME  95 

good-naturedly,  kw  Ah!  that  is  a  different  thing. 
I  wish  you  to  say  what  you  think.  I  regard 
Tennyson  as  a  great  calf,  but  you  are  entitled 
to  your  own  opinion."  The  oration  met  with 
much  applause  at  certain  passages,  including 
this  one;  and  the  applause  was  just,  for  these 
passages  were  written  by  my  elder  sister, 
who  had  indeed  suggested  the  subject  of  the 
whole  address.  But  I  fear  that  its  only  value 
to  posterity  will  consist  in  the  remark  it  eli 
cited  from  the  worthy  professor;  this  comment 
affording  certainly  an  excellent  milestone  for 
Tennyson's  early  reputation. 

It  is  worth  while  to  remember,  also,  that 
this  theory  of  calfhood,  like  most  of  the  early 
criticisms  on  Tennyson,  had  a  certain  founda 
tion  in  the  affectations  and  crudities  of  these 
first  fruits,  long  since  shed  and  ignored.  That 
was  in  the  period  of  the  two  thin  volumes, 
with  their  poem  on  the  author's  room,  now 
quotable  from  memory  only :  — 

"  Ob,  darling  room,  my  heart's  delight! 
Dear  room,  the  apple  of  my  sight! 
With  thy  two  couches  soft  and  white, 
There  is  no  room  so  exquisite, 
No  little  room  so  warm  and  bright. 
Wherein  to  read,  wherein  to  write." 


96      THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

I  do  not  count  it  to  the  discredit  of  my  mentor, 
after  the  lapse  of  half  a  century,  that  he  dis 
cerned  in  this  something  which  it  is  now  the 
fashion  to  call  "veal."'  Similar  lapses  helped 
to  explain  the  early  under-estimate  of  the  Lake 
school  of  poets  in  England,  and  Margaret 
Fuller's  early  criticisms  on  Lowell.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  commonly  true  that  authors 
temporarily  elevated,  in  the  first  rude  attempts 
to  solve  the  equation  of  fame,  have  afforded 
some  reason,  however  inadequate,  for  their 
over-appreciation.  Th^ophile  Gautier,  in  the 
essay  already  quoted,  says  that  no  man  entirely 
dupes  his  epoch,  and  there  is  always  some  basis 
for  the  shallowest  reputations,  though  what  is 
truly  admirable  may  find  men  insensible  for  a 
time.  And  Joubert,  always  profounder  than 
Gautier,  while  admitting  that  popularity  varies 
with  the  period  (la  vogue  des  livres  depend  du 
gout  des  siecles),  tells  us  also  that  only  what  is 
excellent  is  held  in  lasting  memory  (la  memoire 
riaime  que  ce  qui  est  excellent),  and  winds  up 
his  essay  on  the  qualities  of  the  writer  with 
the  pithy  motto,  "  Excel  and  you  will  live" 
(excelle  et  tu  vivras)  ! 


CONCERNING   HIGH-WATER    MARKS  97 

XI 
CONCERNING  HIGH-WATER  MARKS 

TN  Eckermann's  conversations  with  Goethe, 
the  poet  is  described  as  once  showing  his 
admirer  a  letter  from  Zelter  which  was  obvi 
ously  witten  in  a  fortunate  hour.  Pen,  paper, 
handwriting,  were  all  favorable ;  so  that  for 
once,  Goethe  said,  there  was  a  true  and  com 
plete  expression  of  the  man,  and  perhaps  one 
never  again  to  be  obtained  in  like  perfection. 
The  student  of  literature  is  constantly  im 
pressed  with  the  existence  of  these  single  auto 
graphs,  these  high-water  marks  as  it  were,  of 
individual  genius. 

"It  is  in  the  perfection  and  precision  of  the 
instantaneous  line,"  wrote  Ruskin  in  his  earlier 
days,  "that  the  claim  of  immortality  is  made." 
Dr.  Holmes  somewhere  counsels  a  young  author 
to  be  wary  of  the  fate  that  submerges  so  many 
famous  works,  and  advises  him  to  risk  his  all 
upon  a  small  volume  of  poems,  among  which 
there  may  be  one,  conceived  in  some  happy 


98      THE   NEW   WOKLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

hour,  that  shall  live.  After  the  few  great 
reputations  there  is  perhaps  no  better  anchorage 
in  the  vast  sea  of  fame  than  a  single  sonnet  like 
that  of  Blanco  White.  Since,  at  the  best, 
one's  reputation  is  to  be  determined  by  one's 
high-water  mark,  why  not  be  content  with  that 
alone?  If  all  but  the  one  best  work  must 
surely  be  forgotten,  why  should  the  rest  be 
called  into  existence?  Let  it  perish  with  prize 
poems  and  Commencement  orations,  if  one  can 
only  determine  in  advance  which  is  the  single 
and  felicitous  offspring  possessing  that  precise 
quality  which  the  physicians  name  ''viability" 
—  the  capacity  to  keep  itself  alive. 

Happily,  this  is  not  so  difficult  as  one  might 
suppose.  It  often  takes  a  great  while  to  de 
termine  the  comparative  merit  of  authors,  — 
indeed,  the  newspapers  are  just  now  saying 
that  the  late  Mr.  Tupper  had  a  larger  income 
from  the  sales  of  his  works  than  Browning, 
Tennyson,  and  Lowell  jointly  received,  —  but 
it  does  not  take  so  long  to  determine  which 
among  an  author's  works  are  the  best;  and  it  is 
probable  that  the  "  Descent  of  Neptune  "  in  the 
Iliad,  and  the  "Vision  of  Helen"  in  the  Aga- 


CONCERNING   HIGH-WATER   MARKS  99 

memnon  of  ^Eschylus,  and  Sappho's  famous 
ode,  and  the  "  Birds  "  of  Aristophanes,  and  the 
"  Hylas  "  of  Theocritus,  and  the  "  Sparrow  "  of 
Catullus,  and  the  "  De  Arte  Poetica "  of 
Horace  were  early  recognized  as  being  the 
same  distinct  masterpieces  that  we  now  find 
them.  It  is  the  tradition  that  an  empress  wept 
when  Virgil  recited  his  uTu  Marcellus  eris; " 
and  it  still  remains  the  one  passage  in  the 
jEneid  that  calls  tears  to  the  eye.  After  all, 
contemporary  criticism  is  less  trivial  than  we 
think.  "Philosophers,"  says  Novalis,  "are  the 
eternal  Nile-gauges  of  a  tide  that  has  passed 
away,  and  the  only  question  we  ask  of  them  is, 
4  How  high  water? '  '  But  contemporary  criti 
cism  is  also  a  Nile-gauge,  and  it  records  high- 
water  marks  with  a  curious  approach  to 
accuracy. 

There  was  never  a  time,  for  instance,  when 
Holmes's  early  poem,  "  The  Last  Leaf,"  was  not 
recognized  as  probably  his  best,  up  to  the  time 
when  "The  Chambered  Nautilus"  superseded 
it,  and  took  its  place  unequivocally  as  his 
high-water  mark.  At  every  author's  reading 
it  is  the  crowning  desire  that  Holmes  should 


100    THE    NEW    WORLD    AND    THE    NEW  BOOK 

read  the  latter. of  these  two  poems,  though  he  is 
still  permitted  to  add  the  former.  From  the 
moment  when  Lowell  read  his  "  Commemora 
tion  Ode  "  at  Cambridge,  that  great  poem  took 
for  him  the  same  position;  while  out  of  any 
hundred  critics  ninety-nine  would  place  the 
"  Day  in  June  "  as  the  best  of  his  shorter  pas 
sages,  and  the  "Bigelow  Papers,"  of  course, 
stand  collectively  for  his  humor.  Emerson's 
"The  Problem"  —  containing  the  only  verses 
by  a  living  author  hung  up  for  contemplation  in 
Westminster  Abbey  —  still  stands  as  the  high- 
water  mark  of  his  genius,  although  possibly,  so 
great  is  the  advantage  possessed  by  a  shorter 
poem,  it  may  be  superseded  at  last  by  his 
"  Daughters  of  Time."  No  one  doubts  that 
Bayard  Taylor  will  go  down  to  fame,  if  at 
all,  by  his  brief  "  Legend  of  Balaklava,"  and 
Julia  Ward  Howe  by  her  "  Battle  Hymn  of  the 
Republic."  It  is,  perhaps,  characteristic  of  the 
even  and  well-distributed  muse  of  Whittier  that 
it  is  less  easy  to  select  his  high-water  mark; 
but  perhaps  "  My  Playmate  "  comes  as  near  to  it 
as  anything.  Bryant's  "  Waterfowl "  is  easily 
selected,  and  so  is  Longfellow's  "  Wreck  of  the 


CONCERNING   HIGH-WATER   MARKS        101 


fc  Hesperus,'  "  as  conveying  more  sense  of  shap 
ing  imagination  than  any  other,  while  "  Evan- 
geline  "  would,  of  course,  command  the  majority 
of  votes  among  his  longer  poems.  In  some 
cases,  as  in  Whitman's  "  My  Captain,'1  the 
high-water  mark  may  have  been  attained  pre 
cisely  at  the  moment  when  the  poet  departed 
from  his  theory  and  confined  himself  most  nearly 
to  the  laws  he  was  wont  to  spurn  —  in  this  case, 
by  coming  nearest  to  a  regularity  of  rhythm. 

The  praise  generally  bestowed  on  the  admir 
able  selections  in  the  "Library  of  American 
Literature,"  by  Mr.  Stedman  and  Miss  Hutch- 
inson,  is  a  proof  that  there  is  a  certain  con 
sensus  of  opinion  on  this  subject.  Had  they 
left  out  Austin's  "  Peter  Rugg,''  or  Hale's  "A 
Man  Without  a  Country,"  there  would  have 
been  a  general  feeling  of  discontent.  It  would 
have  been  curious  to  see  if,  had  these  editors 
been  forced  by  public  opinion  to  put  in  some 
thing  of  their  own,  they  would  have  inserted 
what  others  would  regard  as  their  high- water 
mark.  I  should  have  predicted  that  it  would 
be  so;  and  that  this  would  be,  in  Stedman's 
case,  the  stanzas  beginning  — 

"  Thou  art  mine;  thou  hast  given  thy  word," 


102   THE    NEW    WORLD    AND    THE   NEW    BOOK 


and  closing  with  that  unsurpassed  poetic  sym 
bol  of  hopeless  remoteness  — 

"  As  the  pearl  in  the  depths  of  the  sea 
From  the  portionless  king  who  would  wear  it." 

In  the  case  of  Miss  Hutchinson,  her  exquisite 
little  poem  of  "  The  Moth-Song "  will  be 
equally  unmistakable.  When  Harriet  Prescott 
Spofford's  first  youthful  story,  "  Sir  Rohan's 
Ghost,"  originally  appeared,  Lowell  selected 
from  it  with  strong  admiration,  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  the  song,  "In  a  Summer  Evening;" 
and  it  still  remains  the  most  unequivocal  prod 
uct  of  her  rare  but  unequal  genius.  The  late 
Helen  Jackson  placed  the  poem  called  "  Spin 
ning  "  at  the  head  of  her  volume  of  "  Verses," 
not  because  it  was  that  which  touched  the 
greatest  depths,  but  because  it  seemed  to  be 
universally  accepted  as  her  fullest,  maturest, 
and  most  thoughtful  product.  Aldrich's  noble 
Fredericksburg  sonnet,  in  a  somewhat  similar 
way,  stands  out  by  itself;  it  seems  to  differ 
in  kind  rather  than  degree  from  the  "  airy 
rhyme  "  of  which  he  is  wont  to  be  the  "  en 
amored  architect;"  its  texture  is  so  firm,  its 
cadence  so  grand,  that  it  seems  more  and  more 


CONCERNING    HIGH-WATER   MARKS         103 

likely  to  rank  as  being,  next  to  Lowell's  Ode, 
the  most  remarkable  poem  called  out  by  the 
Civil  War.  It  is  such  writing  as  Keats  pro 
nounced  to  be  "  next  to  fine  doing,  the  top 
thing  in  the  universe ; "  and  we  must  not 
forget  that  Wolfe,  before  Quebec,  pronounced 
fine  writing  to  be  the  greater  thing  of  the  two. 
The  crowning  instances  of  high-water  marks 
are  in  those  poems  which,  like  Blanco  White's 
sonnet,  alone  bear  the  writer's  name  down  to 
posterity.  How  completely  the  truculent  Poe 
fancied  that  he  had  extinguished  for  all  time 
the  poetry  of  my  gifted  and  wayward  kinsman, 
Ellery  Channing;  and  yet  it  is  not  at  all  cer 
tain  that  the  one  closing  line  of  Channing's 
"  A  Poet's  Hope,"- 

'•  If  my  bark  sinks,  'tis  to  another  sea," 

may  not  secure  the  immortality  it  predicts,  and 
perhaps  outlive  everything  of  Poe's.  Wasson's 
fine  poem,  "  Bugle  Notes,"  beginning,  — 

"  Sweet-voiced  Hope,  thy  fine  discourse 
Foretold  not  half  Life's  good  to  me," 

will  be,  unless  I  greatly  mistake,  as  lasting  as 
the  seventeenth-century  poems  among  which  it 


104  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

naturally  ranks.  The  mere  title,  "  Some  Lov 
er's  Clear  Day,"  of  Weiss's  poem  will  endure, 
perhaps,  after  the  verses  themselves  and  all  else 
connected  with  that  unique  and  wayward  per 
sonality  are  forgotten.  It  is  many  years  since 
I  myself  wrote  of  "  that  rare  and  unappreciated 
thinker,  Brownlee  Brown ;"  and  he  is  less 
known  now  than  he  was  then ;  yet  his  poem  on 
Immortality,  preserved  by  Stedman  and  Hutch- 
inson,  is  so  magnificent  that  it  cheapens  most 
of  its  contemporary  literature,  and  seems  alone 
worth  a  life  otherwise  obscure.  It  is  founded 
on  Xenophon's  well-known  story  of  the  soldiers 
of  Cyrus's  expedition.  "  As  soon  as  the  men 
who  were  in  the  vanguard  had  climbed  the  hill 
and  beheld  the  sea,  they  gave  a  great  shout 
.  .  .  crying  4  Thalatta  !  Thalatta  !  '  " 

THE  CRY  OF  THE  TEN  THOUSAND. 

"  I  stand  upon  the  summit  of  my  life: 
Behind,  the  camp,  the  court,  the  field,  the  grove, 
The  battle  and  the  burden ;  vast,  afar, 
Beyond  these  weary  ways,  Behold,  the  Sea! 
The  sea  o'erswept  by  clouds  and  winds  and  wings, 
By  thoughts  and  wishes  manifold,  whose  breath 
Is  freshness,  and  whose  mighty  pulse  is  peace. 
Palter  no  question  of  the  horizon  dim,  — 
Cut  loose  the  bark;  such  voyage  itself  is  rest, 
Majestic  motion,  unimpeded  scope, 


CONCERNING   HIGH-WATER   MARKS         105 

A  widening  heaven,  a  current  without  care, 
Eternity!—  deliverance,  promise,  course! 
Time-tired  souls  salute  thee  from  the  shore." 

Who  knows  but  that,  when  all  else  of  Ameri 
can  literature  has  vanished  into  forge tfulness, 
some  single  little  masterpiece  like  this  may 
remain  to  show  the  high-water  mark,  not 
merely  of  a  single  poet,  but  of  a  nation  and  a 
generation  ? 


106    THE   NEW    WORLD   AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

XII 
PERSONAL  IDEALS 

Q<  IR  EDWIN  ARNOLD,  like  most  English- 
men  of  conservative  proclivities,  thinks 
that  we  should  be  better  off  if  we  had  in  this 
country  a  better  supply  of  "class  distinctions." 
He  thinks  that  these  distinctions  supply  to 
Englishmen  "  respect  for  authority  and  certain 
personal  ideals  which  they  follow  devotedly." 
There  is,  no  doubt,  something  to  be  said  in 
defence  of  respect  for  authority,  but  everything 
depends  upon  the  selection  of  the  source.  As 
a  rule,  the  rich,  the  contented,  the  prosperous, 
think  that  the  authority  should  be  their  own  or 
that  of  their  friends.  The  poor,  the  obscure, 
the  discontented,  are  less  satisfied  with  this 
assignment.  Now  it  is  useless  to  say  that 
authority  in  itself  is  a  good  thing  without 
reference  to  its  origin  or  its  quality.  It  is 
like  saying  that  scales  and  weights  are  a 
good  thing,  without  reference  to  the  question 
who  fixed  their  value.  If  you  weigh  by  the 


PERSONAL   IDEALS  107 

scales  of  a  cheating  pedler,  then  the  more  au 
thority  you  assign  to  his  weights,  the  worse  for 
you;  better  guess  at  it  or  measure  out  by  the 
handful.  We  read  in  Knickerbocker's  New 
York  that  the  standard  weight  of  the  early  set 
tlers  in  dealing  with  the  Indians  was  the 
weight  of  a  Dutchman's  foot;  and  no  doubt 
the  Indians  were  told  that  it  was  their  duty 
to  pay  reverence  to  this  form  of  authority. 
In  England  at  the  present  day  the  authority  is 
not  vested  in  the  foot  of  a  Dutchman,  but  in 
the  coronet  of  a  German ;  there  seems  no  other 
difference.  A  word  from  the  Prince  of  Wales 
in  London  determines  not  merely  the  cut  of  a 
livery  or  the  wearing  of  a  kid  glove,  but  the 
good  repute  of  an  artist  or  the  bad  repute  of 
an  actress.  If  he  beckons  a  poet  across  the 
room,  the  poet  feels  honored.  Indeed,  the  late 
Mrs.  George  Bancroft,  a  keen  observer,  once 
told  me  that  she  never  knew  an  Englishman, 
however  eminent  in  art  or  science,  who,  if  he 
had  dined  with  a  duke,  could  help  mention 
ing  the  fact  to  all  his  acquaintances.  But  is 
there  anything  ennobling  in  this  form  of  social 
authority  ? 


108   THE   NEW    WORLD    AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

Now  that  the  human  race  has  reached  some 
degree  of  maturity  and  self-respect,  there  is  no 
dignity  in  any  tribunal  of  authority  except  that 
which  a  self-governing  nation  has  created  for 
itself.  Such  deference,  and  such  alone,  is 
manly.  To  find  such  deference  at  its  highest 
point,  we  must  look  for  it  in  that  entertained 
by  the  American  people  for  its  own  higher 
courts  —  courts  which  it  has  created,  and  could 
at  any  period  Avith  a  little  delay  abolish,  but 
which  it  recognizes  meanwhile  as  supreme  au 
thority.  This  same  sentiment  has  never  in 
our  day  been  brought  to  a  test  so  difficult  and 
a  result  so  triumphant  as  in  1876,  when  Presi 
dent  Hayes  was  declared  Chief  Magistrate. 
Nearly  one-half  of  the  American  voters  hon 
estly  believed  at  that  time  that  they  had  been 
defrauded  of  their  rights ;  but  the  decision  was 
made  by  a  court  expressly  constituted  for  the 
purpose,  and  when  made,  the  decree  was  self- 
executing,  not  a  soldier  being  ordered  out  in 
its  support.  It  is  hard  to  imagine,  and  perhaps 
not  desirable  to  see,  a  respect  for  authority 
more  complete  than  this ;  for  even  such  respect 
may  be  too  excessive  —  as  many  of  us  discov- 


PERSONAL   IDEALS  109 

ered  during  the  fugitive-slave  period  —  and  may 
destroy  the  very  liberties  it  seeks  to  preserve. 

When  it  conies  to  personal  ideals,  again, 
it  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world  whether 
the  ideals  are  to  be  of  the  genuine  kind,  or 
merely  composed  of  a  court  dress  and  a  few 
jewels.  There  is  something  noble  in  the  rev 
erence  for  an  ideal,  even  if  the  object  of  rever 
ence  be  ill-selected.  There  is  a  fine  passage 
in  Heine's  fragmentary  papers  on  England, 
where  he  suddenly  comes,  among  the  London 
docks,  to  a  great  ship  just  from  some  Oriental 
port,  breathing  of  the  gorgeous  East,  and 
manned  with  a  crew  of  dark  Mohammedans  of 
many  tribes.  Weary  of  the  land  around  him, 
and  yearning  for  the  strange  world  from  which 
they  came,  he  yet  could  not  utter  a  word  of 
their  language,  till  at  last  he  thought  of  a  mode 
of  greeting.  Stretching  forth  his  hands  rever 
ently,  he  cried,  "Mohammed!*'  Joy  flashed 
over  their  dark  faces,  and  assuming  a  reverent 
posture,  they  answered,  "  Bonaparte!  "  It  mat 
ters  not  whether  either  of  these  heroes  was  a 
false  prophet,  he  stood  for  a  personal  ideal,  such 
as  no  mere  king  or  nobleman  can  represent; 


110   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE  NEW  BOOK 

and  such  an  influence  may  exist  equally  under 
any  government.  Beaconsfield  and  Gladstone, 
Cleveland  and  Elaine,  represent  hosts  of  sincere 
and  unselfish  admirers,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
of  bitter  opponents.  If  the  enthusiasm  be 
greater  in  England,  so  is  the  hostility;  no 
American  statesman,  not  even  Jefferson  or 
Jackson,  ever  was  the  object  of  such  utter  and 
relentless  execration  as  was  commonly  poured 
on  Gladstone  in  England  a  year  or  two  ago  in 
what  is  called  "  the  best  society,"  where  Sir 
Edwin  Arnold's  ideals  are  supposed  to  be  most 
prevalent. 

No  class  distinctions  can  do  anything  but 
obscure  such  ideals  as  this.  The  habit  of  per 
sonal  reverence  —  such  reverence,  for  instance, 
as  the  college  boy  gives  to  a  favorite  teacher  — 
is  not  only  independent  of  all  social  barriers, 
but  makes  them  trivial.  I  remember  that,  some 
ten  years  ago,  when  I  was  travelling  by  rail 
within  sight  of  Princeton  College,  a  young- 
fellow  next  me  pointed  it  out  eagerly,  and  said 
to  me,  "  I  suppose  that  there  are  in  that  college 
two  of  the  very  greatest  thinkers  of  modern 
times."  I  asked  their  names,  knowing  that  one 


PERSONAL   IDEALS  111 

of  them  would,  of  course,  be  Dr.  McCosh,  and 
receiving  as  the  other  name  that  of  a  gentleman 
of  whom  I  had  never  heard,  and  whom  I  have 
now  forgotten ;  so  that  my  young  friend's  com 
pliment  may  be  distributed  for  what  it  is 
worth  among  all  those  professors  who  may  wish 
to  claim  it.  Such  and  so  honorable  was  the 
enthusiastic  feeling  expressed  by  President 
Garfield  toward  Mark  Hopkins,  —  that  to  sit  on 
the  same  log  with  him  was  to  be  in  a  univer 
sity, —  or  the  feeling  that  the  Harvard  students 
of  forty  years  since  had  toward  James  Walker. 
Compare  this  boyish  enthusiasm  with  the  de 
light  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  over  the  possession 
of  a  wineglass  out  of  which  George  IV.  had 
drunk  when  Prince  Regent ;  and  remember  how 
he  carried  it  home  for  an  heirloom  in  his  fam 
ily,  and  sat  down  on  it  and  broke  it  after  his 
arrival.  Which  was  the  more  noble  way  of 
getting  at  a  personal  ideal?  "  There  is  no 
stronger  satire  on  the  proud  English  society  of 
that  day,"  says  Thackeray,  "  than  that  they 
admired  George."  When  the  history  of  this 
age  comes  to  be  written  by  some  critic  as  fear 
less  as  the  author  of  "  The  Four  Georges,"  does 


112   THE   NEW    \VOKLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

any  one  doubt  that  the  present  Prince  of  Wales 
—  whom  even  Punch  once  represented  as  fol 
lowing  in  the  steps  of  his  uncle,  like  Hamlet 
following  the  ghost,  with  "  Go  on!  I'll  follow 
thee  "  —  will  shift  his  position  as  hopelessly  as 
did  George  the  Fourth?  "  Which  was  the 
most  splendid  spectacle  ever  witnessed,"  asks 
Thackeray,  "  the  opening  feast  of  Prince  George 
in  London,  or  the  resignation  of  Washington  ?  " 
After  all,  it  seems,  the  most  eminent  of  mod 
ern  English  literary  men  has  to  turn  from  a 
monarchy  to  a  republic  to  find  a  splendid  spec 
tacle. 


OX  THE  NEED  OF  A  BACKGROUND   113 
XIII 

ON   THE   NEED   OF   A   BACKGROUND 

IV/TR.  R.  W.  GILDER,  in  a  recent  valu 
able  address  at  Wesleyan  University, 
gives  a  list  of  nearly  a  score  of  younger  Ameri 
can  writers,  who  owe,  as  he  points  out,  little  or 
nothing  to  the  college ;  but  he  leaves  the  ques 
tion  still  open  whether  it  might  not  be  better 
for  some  of  them  if  they  had  owed  the  college 
a  little  more.  Most  of  those  whom  he  names 
are  writers  of  fiction,  an  art  in  which,  as  in 
poetry,  the  spark  of  original  genius  counts  for 
almost  everything,  and  what  is  called  literary 
training  for  comparatively  little.  But  poetry 
and  fiction  do  not  constitute  the  whole  of  litera 
ture.  The  moment  the  novelist  leaves  the  little 
world  of  his  own  creating  and  ventures  on  the 
general  ground  of  literary  production,  the  mo 
ment  he  undertakes  to  write  history  or  philos 
ophy  or  criticism,  he  feels  the  need  of  something 
besides  creative  power,  something  which  may 
be  called  a  literary  background.  His  readers, 


114   THE   NEW   WOULD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

at  any  rate,  demand  for  him,  if  he  does  not 
perceive  the  need  of  it  for  himself,  that  there 
shall  be  something  which  suggests  a  wide  and 
flexible  training,  with  large  vistas  of  knowl 
edge.  They  like  to  see  in  him  that  "  full  man  " 
who  is  made,  as  Lord  Bacon  says,  by  "reading." 
One  main  reason  why  Homer  and  Plato  and 
Horace  and  even  Dante  seem  to  supply  more  of 
this  kind  of  fulness  than  can  be  got  from  an 
equivalent  study  of  Balzac  and  Ruskin,  is 
doubtless  because  the  older  authors  are  remoter, 
and  so  make  the  vista  look  more  wide.  The 
vaster  the  better;  but  there  must  be  enough  of 
it,  at  least,  to  convey  a  distinct  sensation  of 
background.  Of  course,  when  this  background 
obtrudes  itself  into  the  foreground,  it  becomes 
intolerable;  and  such  books  as  Burton's  "Anat 
omy  of  Melancholy  "  are  tiresome,  because  they 
are  all  made  up  of  background,  and  that  of  the 
craggiest  description;  but,  after  all,  the  books 
which  offer  only  foreground  are  also  insufficient. 
I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can  read  the  essays  of 
Ho  wells  and  James  and  Burroughs,  for  instance, 
after  reading  those  of  Emerson  or  Lowell  or 
Thoreau,  without  noticing  in  the  younger  trio 


ON   THE   NEED   OF   A  BACKGROUND        115 

a  somewhat  narrowed  range  of  allusion  and 
illustration;  a  little  deficiency  in  that  mellow 
richness  of  soil  which  can  be  made  only  out  of 
the  fallen  leaves  of  many  successive  vegetations ; 
a  want,  in  fact,  of  background. 

It  is  to  be  readily  admitted  that  there  is  no 
magic  in  a  college,  and  that  any  writer  who  has 
a  vast  love  of  knowledge  may  secure  his  back 
ground  for  himself,  as  did,  for  example,  Theo 
dore  Parker.  Yet  he  cannot  obtain  it  without 
what  is,  in  some  sense,  the  equivalent  of  a 
college;  long  early  years  spent  in  various 
studies,  and  especially  in  those  liberal  pursuits 
formerly  known  as  the  Humanities.  No  doubt 
there  is  much  material  accessible  in  other  ways, 
as  by  wide  travel,  or  even  in  the  forecastle  or 
on  a  ranch.  But,  after  all,  the  main  preserva 
tive  of  knowledge  is  in  the  art  of  printing; 
and  while  the  merely  bookish  man  may  never 
make  a  writer,  there  is  nothing  that  so  en 
riches  prose-writing  as  some  background  of 
book -knowledge.  In  case  of  old  Burton,  just 
mentioned,  the  book-knowledge  clearly  mas 
tered  the  man ;  and  the  same  is  the  case  with 
one  who  might  perhaps  have  been  the  most 


1 16    THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

fascinating  of  modern  English  authors  had  not 
his  own  library  proved  too  much  for  him  —  the 
Roman  Catholic  Digby.  The  inability  to  cope 
with  his  own  knowledge  has  been  in  his  case 
fatal  to  renown;  his  "Broad  Stone  of  Honor" 
is  known  to  many  a  lover  of  good  books  in 
America ;  yet  when  I  was  trying  to  find  him  in 
London,  I  discovered  that  Froude  had  never 
even  heard  his  name.  It  is  the  Nemesis  of 
learning ;  a  man  who  cannot  cope  with  his  own 
attainments  is  like  the  Norse  giant  who  was 
suffocated  by  his  own  wisdom  and  had  to  be 
relieved  by  a  siphon.  But  even  he  may  help 
others,  -whereas  the  man  who  writes  without  a 
background  of  knowledge  gives  but  a  superfi 
cial  aid  to  anybody,  although  his  personality 
considered  as  a  mere  foreground  may  be  very 
charming. 

When  the  writers  of  Oriental  sacred  books 
began  with  the  creation  of  the  world,  they 
undoubtedly  went  too  far  for  a  background; 
it  was  also  going  too  far  when  the  House  of 
Commons  was  more  displeased  by  a  false  Latin 
quantity  than  by  a  false  argument.  I  am  per 
fectly  willing  to  concede  that  much  time  has 


ON  THE   NEED   OF   A   BACKGROUND        117 

been  wasted,  in  times  past,  on  the  niceties  of 
classical  scholarship;  and,  moreover,  that  what 
is  most  valuable  in  Greek  and  Roman  literature 
has  been  so  transfused  into  the  modern  litera 
tures  that  it  is  no  longer  so  important  as  for 
merly  to  seek  it  at  the  fountain-head.  It  seems 
only  a  fine  old-fashioned  whim  when  we  read  of 
the  desire  of  Dr.  Popkin,  the  old  Greek  Profes 
sor  at  Harvard  College,  to  retire  from  teaching 
and  "  read  the  authors,"'  meaning  thereby  the 
Greeks  alone.  The  authors  who  are  worth 
reading  have  now  increased  to  a  number  that 
would  quite  dismay  the  good  professor;  but  the 
more  one  has  read,  the  better  for  his  literary 
background.  It  is  necessary  to  use  the  past 
tense,  for  the  need  must  commonly  have  been 
supplied  in  early  life ;  and  this  implies  either 
a  college  or  its  equivalent;  that  is,  a  period 
when  one  reads  voraciously,  without  any  limi 
tation  but  in  the  number  of  hours  in  the  day, 
and  without  any  immediate  necessity  of  literary 
production. 

One  sees  but  few  men  —  I  can  claim  to  have 
personally  known  but  one,  the  historian,  Francis 
Parkman  —  for  whom  a  perfectly  well-defined 


118   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

literary  purpose  lias  shaped  itself  in  early  years 
and  has  proved  the  adequate  task  of  a  lifetime. 
This  is  not  ordinarily  to  be  expected,  or  even 
desired.  Some  men  simply  fill  in  a  wide  back 
ground  without  the  possibility  of  predicting 
where  the  foreground  of  their  intellectual  work 
will  lie.  No  matter;  they  may  at  any  moment 
reap  the  advantage  of  this  early  breadth.  There 
are  no  departments  of  study  which  are  more  apt 
to  prove  useful  in  the  end  than  those  on  which 
Time  has  for  a  while  set  up  the  sign  No  Thor 
oughfare.  It  has  been  said  that  no  one  is  rich 
in  knowledge  who  cannot  afford  to  let  two- 
thirds  of  it  lie  fallow;  nor  can  any  one  tell  in 
which  particular  field  he  may  at  any  moment  be 
called  on  to  resume  production,  or,  at  least,  to 
take  the  benefit  of  some  early  harvest  that  was 
merely  ploughed  in. 

While  I  am  therefore  proud,  as  an  American, 
of  the  clever  writing  and  even  of  the  genius  of 
many  of  the  authors  who  owe  nothing  to  col 
leges;  and  while  I  rejoice  to  see  it  demon 
strated  as  has  been  shown  by  Mr.  Howells  and 
Mr.  James,  that  much  of  the  strength  and  deli 
cacy  of  English  style  can  be  attained  without 


ON   THE   NEED   OF    A    BACKGROUND        119 

early  academic  training;  I  think  that  it  is  un 
safe  to  let  our  criticism  stop  here.  We  need 
the  advantage  of  the  background;  the  flavor  of 
varied  cultivation;  the  depth  of  soil  that  comes 
from  much  early  knowledge  of  a  great  many 
books.  This  does  not  involve  pedantry,  al 
though  it  is  possible  to  be  pedantic  even  in 
fiction,  as  Victor  Hugo's  endless  and  tiresome 
soliloquizers  show.  The  deeper  the  sub-soil  is, 
the  more  diligently  the  farmer  must  break  it 
up ;  he  must  not  prefer  a  shallower  loam  to  save 
trouble  in  ploughing.  The  two  things  must  be 
combined,  — intellectual  capital  and  labor;  ac 
cumulation  and  manipulation ;  background  and 
foreground.  Addison's  fame  rests  partly  on 
the  three  folio  volumes  of  materials  which  he 
collected  before  beginning  the  Spectator ;  but 
it  rests  also  on  the  lightness  of  touch  that  made 
him  Addison. 


120   THE   NEW    WOULD   AND   THE  NEW   BOOK 


XIV 
UNNECESSARY  APOLOGIES 

r  I  ^HE  newspaper  critics  seem  to  me  mistaken 
in  attributing  the  favorable  reception  of 
Mr.  Bryce's  admirable  book  on  the  "  American 
Commonwealth  "  to  a  diminished  national  sen 
sitiveness.  It  is  certain  that  this  sensitiveness 
has  greatly  diminished,  and  certain  also  that 
Mr.  Bryce  gives  us  plenty  of  praise.  But  the 
main  difference  seems  to  lie  in  this,  that  Mr. 
Bryce  treats  us  as  a  subject  for  serious  study, 
and  not  as  a  primary  class  for  instruction  in 
the  rudiments  of  morals  and  grammar.  The 
usual  complaint  made  by  us  against  English 
writers  is  the  same  now  as  in  the  days  of 
Dickens,  that  they  come  here  chiefly  to  teach 
and  not  to  inquire.  No  man  had  so  many 
foreign  visitors  in  his  time  as  the  late  Professor 
Longfellow,  and  there  never  lived  a  man  in 
whom  the  element  of  kindly  charity  more  pre- 


UNNECESSARY   APOLOGIES  121 

vailed ;  yet  he  records  in  his  diary l  his  surprise 
that  so  few  foreigners  apparently  desire  any 
information  about  this  country,  while  all  have 
much  to  communicate  on  the  subject.  The 
reason  why  every  one  reads  with  pleasure  even 
the  censures  of  Mr.  Bryce  is  because  he  has 
really  taken  the  pains  to  learn  something  about 
us.  There  is  probably  no  American  author 
who  has  traversed  this  continent  so  widely  and 
repeatedly;  there  is  perhaps  no  one  who  has 
made  so  careful  a  comparative  study  of  the  State 
governments ;  and  there  is  certainly  no  one  who 
could  re-enforce  this  comparison  by  so  careful  a 
study  of  popular  government  in  other  times  and 
places.  To  say  that  his  book  will  supersede  De 
Tocqueville  is  to  say  little ;  it  is  better  for  the 
present  period  than  was  De  Tocqueville  for  any 
period;  because  it  is  as  clear,  as  candid,  and 
incomparably  more  thorough. 

All  this  refers  to  the  main  theme  of  Mr. 
Biyce's  book;  but  there  is  one  criticism  yet  to 
be  made  upon  it.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  he 
was  ever  tempted  from  his  main  ground,  where 
he  is  so  strong,  to  a  collateral  ground,  where 

i  January  16,  1845. 


122    THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

he  is  weaker.  It  was  not,  perhaps,  necessary 
that  he  should  treat  of  American  literature  at 
all;  at  any  rate,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  his  chapter 
on  this  subject  has  a  perfunctory  air;  it  seems 
like  the  work  of  a  tired  man,  who  feels  that  he 
ought  to  say  something  on  that  point,  yet  does 
not  care  to  grapple  with  it  as  writh  his  main 
question;  and  so  puts  us  off  with  vague  and 
needless,  though  kindly  apologies.  He  is  so 
ready  to  find  good  reasons  for  our  doing  no  more, 
that  he  takes  no  pains  to  analyze  or  weigh  what 
we  have  done;  and  unfortunately  the  habit  of 
colonial  deference  is  still  so  strong  among  us, 
that  we  are  more  disposed  to  be  grateful  to  such 
a  kindly  apologist  than  to  question  his  words. 
It  has  been  a  lifelong  conviction  with  me  that 
the  injury  done  to  American  literature  by  the 
absence  of  a  copyright  law  is  a  trivial  thing 
compared  with  the  depressing  influence  of  this 
prolonged  attitude  of  dependence:  an  attitude 
which  has  disappeared  from  our  political  insti 
tutions,  but  still  exists  in  regard  to  books. 
To  test  it  we  have  only  to  reverse  in  imagi 
nation  the  nationality  of  a  few  authors  and 
critics,  and  consider  what  a  change  of  estimate 


UNNECESSARY   APOLOGIES  123 

such  an  altered  origin  would  involve.  Let  us 
make,  for  instance,  the  great  effort  of  supposing 
Emerson  an  English  author  and  Matthew  Ar 
nold  an  American ;  does  any  one  suppose  that 
Arnold's  criticisms  on  Emerson  would  in  that 
case  have  attracted  very  serious  attention  in 
either  country?  Had  Mr.  Gosse  been  a  New 
Yorker,  writing  in  a  London  magazine,  would 
any  one  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic  have 
seriously  cared  whether  Mr.  Gosse  thought  that 
contemporary  England  had  produced  a  poet? 
The  reason  why  the  criticisms  of  these  two 
Englishmen  have  attracted  such  widespread 
notice  among  us  is  that  they  have  the  accumu 
lated  literary  weight  —  the  ex  oriente  lux  —  of 
London  behind  them.  We  accept  them  meekly 
and  almost  reverently;  just  as  we  even  accept 
the  criticisms  made  on  Grant  and  Sheridan  by 
Lord  Wolseley,  who  is,  compared  to  either  of 
these  generals,  but  a  carpet  knight.  It  is  in 
some  such  way  that  we  must  explain  the  meek 
gratitude  with  which  our  press  receives  it, 
when  Mr.  Bryce  apologizes  for  our  deficiencies 
in  the  way  of  literature. 

Mr.   Bryce  —  whom,  it  is  needless  to  say,  I 


124   THE   NEW   WOKLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

regard  with  hearty  admiration,  and  I  can  add 
with  personal  affection,  since  he  has  been  my 
guest  and  I  have  been  his  —  Mr.  Bryce  has  a 
chapter  on  "  Creative  Intellectual  Power,"  in 
which  he  has  some  capital  remarks  on  the  im 
possibility  of  saying  why  great  men  appear  in 
one  time  or  place  and  not  in  another  —  in 
Florence,  for  instance,  and  not  in  Naples  or 
Milan.  Then  he  goes  on  to  say  that  there  is 
"  no  reason  why  the  absence  of  brilliant  genius 
among  the  sixty  millions  in  the  United  States 
should  excite  any  surprise,"  and  adds  soon 
after,  "  It  is  not  to  be  made  a  reproach  against 
America  that  men  like  Tennyson  or  Darwin 
have  not  been  born  there."  Surely  not;  nor 
is  it  a  reproach  against  England  that  men  like 
Emerson  or  Hawthorne  have  not  been  born 
there.  But  if  this  last  is  true,  why  did  it  not 
occur  to  Mr.  Bryce  to  say  it;  and  had  he  said 
it,  is  it  not  plain  that  the  whole  tone  and  state 
ment  of  his  proposition  would  have  been  differ 
ent?  It  occurs  to  him  to  specify  Darwin  and 
Tennyson,  but  the  two  men  who  above  all 
others  represent  creative  intellectual  power,  up 
to  this  time,  in  America,  are  not  so  much  as 
named  in  his  whole  chapter  of  thirteen  pages. 


UNNECESSARY   APOLOGIES  125 

Of  course  it  is  too  early  for  comparison,  but 
it  is  undoubtedly  the  belief  of  many  Americans 
—  at  any  rate,  it  is  one  which  I  venture  to  enter 
tain  —  that  the  place  in  the  history  of  intellect 
held  a  hundred  years  hence  by  the  two  Ameri 
cans  he  forgets  to  mention  will  be  greater  than 
that  of  the  two  Englishmen  he  names.  Greater 
than  Darwin's,  from  the  more  lasting  quality  of 
literary  than  of  scientific  eminence.  Darwin 
was  great,  as  he  was  certainly  noble  and  lov 
able  ;  but  he  was  not  greater,  or  at  least  held 
greater,  than  Newton :  — 

"  Nature  and  Nature's  laws  lay  hid  in  night, 
God  said,  *  Let  Newton  be,'  and  all  was  light." 

More  than  this  could  surely  not  be  said  for 
Darwin;  and  yet  how  vague  and  dim  is  now 
the  knowledge,  even  among  educated  men,  of 
precisely  what  it  was  that  Newton  accomplished, 
compared  with  the  continued  knowledge  held 
by  every  school-boy  as  to  Pope,  who  wrote  the 
lines  just  quoted.  The  mere  record  of  Darwin's 
own  life  shows  how  large  a  part  of  man's  high 
est  mental  action  became  inert  in  him.  He 
ceased  to  care  for  the  spheres  of  thought  in 


126    THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

which  Emerson  chiefly  lived;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  tendencies  and  results  of  Dar 
win's  thought  were  always  an  object  of  interest 
to  Emerson. 

When  we  turn  to  Tennyson  the  comparison 
must  proceed  on  different  grounds,  and  takes 
us  back  to  Coleridge's  fine  definition  of  inspi 
ration,  given  half  a  century  ago  in  his  "  Con 
fessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit."  "  What 
ever  finds  me"  he  wrote,  "  at  a  greater  depth 
than  usual,  that  is  inspired."  It  is  because 
Emerson  in  his  way  and  Hawthorne  in  his  way 
touch  us  at  greater  depths  than  Tennyson  that 
their  chance  for  immortality  is  stronger.  Form 
is  doubtless  needed  in  the  expression;  but  in 
Hawthorne  there  is  no  defect  of  form,  and  the 
frequent  defects  of  this  kind  in  Emerson  are 
balanced  by  tones  and  cadences  so  noble  that 
the  exquisite  lyre  of  Tennyson,  taken  at  its 
best,  has  never  reached  them.  I  do  not  object 
to  the  details  of  treatment  in  Mr.  Bryce's  chap 
ter,  and  it  contains  many  admirable  sugges 
tions;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  he  might  well 
preface  it,  in  a  second  edition,  by  some  such 
remark  —  addressed  to  some  fancied  personifica- 


UNNECESSARY   APOLOGIES  127 

tion  of  American  Literature  —  as  Enobarbus, 
in  "  Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  makes  to  Pom- 
pey:  — 

"  Sir, 

I  never  loved  you  much:  but  I  have  praised  you 
When  you  have  well  deserved  ten  times  as  much 
As  I  have  said  you  did/' 


128   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

XV 

THE    PERILS    OF    AMERICAN    HUMOR 

"VTOTHING  strikes  an  American  more,  on 
his  first  visit  to  England,  than  the  fre 
quent  discussion  of  American  authors  who 
are  rarely  quoted  at  home,  except  in  stump- 
speeches,  and  whose  works  hardly  have  a  place 
as  yet  in  our  literary  collections,  and  who  still 
are  taken  seriously  among  educated  persons  in 
England.  The  astonishment  increases  when 
he  finds  the  almanacs  of  "Josh  Billings"  re 
printed  in  "Libraries  of  American  Humor," 
and  given  an  equal  place  with  the  writings  of 
Holmes  and  Lowell.  Finally  he  is  driven  to 
the  conclusion  that  there  must  be  very  little 
humor  in  England,  where  things  are  seriously 
published  in  book  form  which  here  would  only 
create  a  passing  smile  in  the  corner  of  a  news 
paper.  He  finds  that  the  whole  department  of 
American  humor  was  created,  so  to  speak,  by  the 
amazed  curiosity  of  Englishmen.  It  is  a  phrase 
that  one  rarely  hears  in  the  United  States;  and 


THE   PERILS   OF   AMERICAN   HUMOR       129 

if  we  have  such  a  thing  among  us,  although  it 
may  cling  to  our  garments,  we  are  habitually 
as  unconscious  of  it  as  are  smokers  of  the  per 
fume  of  their  favorite  weed.  When  attention 
is  once  called  to  it,  however,  we  are  compelled 
to  perceive  it,  and  may  then  look  at  it  both 
from  the  desirable  and  undesirable  sides,  since 
both  of  these  sides  it  has. 

There  is  certainly  no  defence  or  water-proof 
garment  against  adverse  fortune  which  is,  on 
the  whole,  so  effectual  as  an  habitual  sense  of 
humor.  The  man  who  has  it  can  rarely  be  cast 
down  for  a  great  while  by  external  events ;  and 
it  is  much  the  same  with  a  nation.  For  some 
reason  or  other,  in  the  transplantation  to  this 
continent,  certain  traits  were  heightened  and 
certain  other  qualities  were  diminished  among 
the  English-speaking  race.  Thus  much  may 
be  safely  assumed.  Among  the  heightened 
attributes  was  the  sense  of  humor;  and  to  this, 
no  doubt,  some  of  our  seeming  virtues  may 
be  attributed. 

The  good-nature  of  an  American  crowd,  the 
long-suffering  of  American  travellers  under 
detention  or  even  fraud,  the  recoil  of  cheer- 


130   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

fulness  after  the  tremendous  excitement  of  a 
national  election  —  all  these  things  are  partly 
due  to  the  national  habit  of  looking  not  so 
much  at  the  bright  side  as  at  the  amusing  side 
of  all  occurrences.  The  day  after  election  the 
most  heated  partisan,  beaten  or  victorious,  not 
only  laughs  at  the  other  party,  but  he  laughs 
at  his  own;  he  laughs  at  himself;  and  this  atti 
tude  of  mind,  which  carried  Abraham  Lincoln 
through  the  vast  strain  of  civil  war  and  eman 
cipation,  is  an  almost  essential  trait  of  life  in  a 
republic.  Public  men  who  have  this  quality 
are  able  to  thrive  on  the  very  wear  and  tear  of 
political  life;  public  men  who  are  without  it, 
as  the  late  Charles  Sumner,  find  the  path  of 
duty  hard,  and  are  kept  up  by  sheer  conscience 
and  will.  And  so  in  private  life,  the  husband 
and  wife  who  have  no  mutual  enjoyment  of 
this  kind,  the  parents  who  derive  no  delight 
from  the  droll  side  of  nursery  life  and  the  per 
petual  unconscious  humor  of  childhood,  must 
find  daily  existence  monotonous  and  wearing. 
It  was  from  this  point  of  view  that  one  of  the 
cleverest  and  most  useful  women  I  have  ever 
known,  the  late  Mrs.  Delano  Goddard,  of 


THE    PERILS   OF    AMERICAN   HUMOR       131 

Boston,  when  asked  what  quality  on  the  whole 
best  promoted  one's  usefulness  in  life,  replied, 
"The  sense  of  humor." 

But  when  this  sense  of  humor  is,  as  one  may 
say,  nationalized,  it  furnishes  some  occasional 
disadvantages  to  set  against  this  merit.  It 
may  not  only  be  turned  against  good  causes, 
but  against  the  whole  attitude  of  earnest  study 
or  faithful  action.  Mr.  Warner  has  lately 
pointed  out  how  not  merely  the  external  repu 
tation  of  Chicago  has  been  injured,  but  its 
whole  intellectual  life  retarded,  by  the  deter 
mined  habit  of  the  newspapers  of  that  city  in 
treating  all  intellectual  efforts  coming  from  that 
quarter  as  a  joke.  u  When  Chicago  makes  up 
her  mind  to  take  hold  of  culture,"  said  one  of 
the  local  humorists,  "she  will  just  make  cul 
ture  hum."  Of  course  it  might  seem  that 
every  word  of  this  vigorous  sentence  must  serve 
to  put  culture  a  little  farther  off.  But,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  culture  is  already  there,  in 
Chicago.  There  is  probably  no  city  in  the 
Union  which  publishes  books  of  a  higher  grade, 
in  proportion  to  their  numbers.  Looking  on 
the  fly-leaf  of  a  new  London  edition  of  Sir 


132  THE  NEW  WOULD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

Philip  Sidney's  "Astrophel  and  Stella,"  the 
other  day,  I  was  not  at  all  surprised  to  find 
that,  of  the  thousand  copies  printed,  one- 
quarter  were  for  the  American  market,  and 
that  these  were  to  be  issued  from  Chicago. 
And  yet  so  fixed  is  this  habit  of  joking  in  the 
mind  of  our  people  that  it  will  probably  last  an 
indefinite  period  into  the  future,  and  keep  all 
the  intellectual  impulses  of  that  particular  city 
in  the  kind  of  uncomfortable  self-consciousness 
which  comes  from  being  always  on  the  defen 
sive.  In  time  such  an  attitude  is  outgrown, 
and  people  are  left  to  enjoy  what  they  like.  I 
can  remember  when  the  disposition  of  Bosto- 
nians  to  take  pleasure  in  Beethoven's  sym 
phonies  was  almost  as  much  of  a  joke  to  Boston 
editors  as  is  the  "humming"  of  culture  in 
Chicago  to-day ;  but  there  is  fortunately  a  limit 
to  human  endurance  in  regard  to  certain  partic 
ular  witticisms,  though  some  of  them  certainly 
die  hard. 

The  same  necessity  for  a  joke  invades  other 
quiet  enjoyments  and  harmless  occupations,  as 
the  study  of  Shakespeare  or  Browning.  It  has 
happened  to  me  to  look  in  at  several  different 


THE   PERILS   OF  AMERICAN    HUMOR       133 

Browning  clubs,  first  and  last ;  but  the  club  of 
the  newspaper  humorist  I  never  have  happened 
to  encounter  —  that  club  which  is  as  vague  and 
misty  and  wordy  as  that  other  creation  of  the 
American  imagination,  the  "Limekiln  Club" 
of  colored  philosophers.  On  the  contrary,  such 
Browning  clubs  as  I  have  happened  to  look  in 
upon  have  had  the  sobriety  and  reasonableness 
which  are  essential  to  the  study  of  a  poet  who, 
although  often  recondite  and  difficult,  is  never 
vague.  Yet  you  may  go  to  the  meeting  of  such 
a  club  and  be  struck  with  the  good-sense  and 
moderation  of  every  word  that  is  uttered;  no 
matter;  the  report  in  the  next  day's  newspaper 
—  if  reporters  are  admitted  —  will  put  in  all 
the  folly  and  adulation  that  the  meeting  wisely 
left  out,  and  this  because  the  reporter  is 
expected  to  exhibit  humor.  It  is  worse  yet 
when  serious  public  discussions  or  the  terrible 
details  of  police  courts  are  burlesqued  in  this 
way.  Few  things,  I  should  say,  are  more 
essentially  demoralizing  than  the  facetious 
police  report  of  the  enterprising  daily  news 
paper.  The  moral  of  it  all  is  that  humor,  like 
fire,  is  a  good  servant  but  a  bad  master ;  that  it 


134   THE  NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

refreshes  and  relieves  the  hard  work  of  life,  and 
is  meant  to  do  so  in  the  order  of  nature;  but 
when  it  becomes  an  end  in  itself  it  takes  the 
real  dignity  from  life,  and  actually  makes  its 
serious  work  harder. 


PROPOSED   ABOLITION   OF   THE   PLOT      135 


XVI 

ON  THE  PROPOSED  ABOLITION  OF 
THE  PLOT 

TT  was  said  of  the  romantic  Muse  in  Germany 
—  of  the  Pegasus,  or  winged  horse  of 
LThland  —  that,  like  its  colleague,  the  famous 
war-horse  Bayard,  it  possessed  all  possible  vir 
tues  and  but  one  fault,  that  it  was  dead.  It  is 
in  this  decisive  way  that  Mr.  Howells  and 
others  deal  with  the  plot  in  stories  and  dramas; 
they  decline  to  argue  the  matter,  but  simply 
assert  that  the  plot  is  extinct.  If  any  one 
doubts  the  assertion  they  would  perhaps  still 
decline  to  argue  the  matter,  and  simply  extend 
the  assertion  to  any  critic  who  differed  from 
them,  pointing  out  that  he  must  be  dead  also. 
It  may  be  so,  since  there  may  always  be 
room  for  such  a  possibility.  "Tyrawley  and 
I,"  said  Walpole's  old  statesman,  "have  been 
dead  these  two  years;  but  we  don't  let  anybody 
know  it."  In  the  matter  of  literar}*  criticism, 
however,  the  fact  is  just  the  other  way.  The 


136    THE   NEW    WORLD    AND    THE    NEW  BOOK 

critics  who  cling  to  the  plot  are  not  aware  of 
their  own  demise ;  but  Mr.  Howells  has  found 
it  out.  To  find  it  out  is  justly  to  silence  them ; 
for,  as  Charles  Lamb  says  in  his  poem  exempli 
fying  "the  lapidary  style,"  which  the  late  Mr. 
Mellish  never  could  abide :  — 

"  It  matters  very  little  what  Mellish  said, 
Because  he  is  dead." 

But  if  we  grant  for  a  moment,  as  a  matter 
of  argument,  that  whatever  yet  speaks  may  be 
regarded,  for  controversial  purposes,  as  being 
alive,  it  may  be  well  enough  pointed  out,  that, 
if  plot  is  dead  and  only  characters  survive,  then 
there  is  a  curious  divergence  in  this  age  be 
tween  the  course  of  literature  and  the  course  of 
science.  If  anything  marks  the  science  of  the 
age  it  is  that  plot  is  everything.  Museums 
were  formerly  collections  of  detached  speci 
mens,  only  classified  for  convenience  under  a 
few  half-arbitrary  divisions.  One  may  still  see 
such  collections  surviving,  for  instance,  in  that 
melancholy  hall  through  which  people  pass,  as 
rapidly  as  possible,  to  reach  the  modern  theatre 
known  as  the  Boston  Museum.  But  in  all 


PROPOSED   ABOLITION   OF   THE   PLOT      137 

natural  history  museums  of  any  pretensions, 
the  individual  specimen  is  subordinated  to  the 
whole.  The  great  Agassiz  collection  at  Har 
vard  is  expressly  named  "  The  Museum  of  Com 
parative  Zoology.''  In  the  Peabody  Museum  at 
Yale  —  in  which,  as  Charles  Darwin  told  me, 
quoting  Huxley,  there  is  more  to  be  learned 
than  from  all  the  museums  of  Europe  —  you  are 
not  shown  the  skeleton  of  a  horse,  and  left  with 
that  knowledge,  but  you  are  shown  every  step 
in  the  development  of  the  horse  from  the  time 
when,  in  pre-historic  periods,  he  was  no  larger 
than  a  fox  and  had  five  toes.  In  science,  plot 
is  not  only  not  ignored,  but  it  is  almost  every 
thing:  only  it  is  not  called  plot,  it  is  called 
evolution. 

And  conversely,  what  is  called  evolution  in 
science  is  called  plot  in  fiction.  Grant  that 
character  is  first  in  importance,  as  it  doubtless 
is,  yet  plot  is  the  development  of  character.  It 
is  not  enough  to  paint  Arthur  Dimmesdale, 
standing  with  his  hand  on  his  heart  and  despair 
in  his  eyes;  to  paint  the  hand  anatomically 
correct,  the  eyes  deep  in  emotion ;  but  we  need 
to  know  what  brought  him  there;  what  pro- 


138   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW    BOOK 

duced  the  strange  combination,  a  Puritan  Saint 
with  a  conscience  wrung  into  distortion.  Lear 
is  not  Lear,  Hamlet  not  Hamlet,  without  a 
glimpse  at  the  conditions  that  have  made  them 
what  the}7  are.  With  the  worst  villains  of  the 
play,  Tfre  need,  as  Margaret  Fuller  profoundly 
said,  to  "hear  the  excuses  men  make  to  them 
selves  for  their  worthlessness."  But  these 
conditions,  these  excuses,  constitute  the  plot. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  dismiss  plot  from  the 
scene,  if  it  means  only  a  conundrum  like 
that  in  "The  Dead  Secret,"  or  a  series  of 
riddles  like  the  French  detective  novels.  In 
these  the  story  is  all,  there  is  no  character 
worth  unravelling ;  and  when  we  have  once  got 
at  the  secret  the  book  is  thrown  away.  But 
where  the  plot  is  a  profound  study  of  the  devel 
opment  of  character,  it  can  never  be  thrown 
away;  and  unless  we  have  it,  the  character  is 
not  really  studied.  What  we  do  at  any  given 
moment  is  largely  the  accumulated  result  of  all 
previous  action;  and  that  action  again  comes 
largely  from  the  action  of  those  around  us. 
"We  are  all  members  one  of  another."  Just 
as  we  are  all  learning  this  in  political  economy, 


PROPOSED   ABOLITION   OF   THE   PLOT      139 

are  we  to  drop  it  out  of  view  in  fiction  ?  The 
thought  or  impulse  that  springs  into  my  mind 
or  heart  this  instant  has  been  largely  moulded 
by  a  hundred  men  and  women,  living  or  dead; 
if  the  novelist  or  the  dramatist  wishes  to  por 
tray  me,  he  must  include  them  also.  Other 
wise  the  picture  is  as  hopelessly  detached  and 
isolated  as  the  figure  in  this  sketch  that  a  very 
young  artist  has  just  brought  me  in  from  the 
seaside  —  a  little  boy  standing  at  the  apex  of 
a  solitary  rock,  fishing  in  the  ocean ;  the  whole 
vast  sea  around  him,  but  not  a  living  thing 
near  him  —  not  even  a  fish. 

We  all  find  ourselves,  as  we  come  into 
mature  society  and  take  our  part  in  life,  sur 
rounded  by  a  network  of  event  and  incident, 
one-tenth  public  and  nine-tenths  private.  If 
we  have  warm  hearts  and  observant  minds  we 
are  pretty  sure  to  be  entangled  in  this  net 
work.  By  middle  life,  every  person  who  has 
seen  much  of  the  world  is  acquainted  with 
secrets  that  would  convulse  the  little  circle 
around  him,  if  told ;  and  might  easily  eclipse 
all  the  novels,  if  the  very  complication  of  the 
matter  did  not  forbid  utterance.  As  no  painter, 


140    THE  NEW   WORLD   AND  THE   NEW   BOOK 

it  is  said,  ever  dared  paint  the  sunset  as  bright 
as  it  often  is,  so  the  most  thrilling  novelist  un 
derstates  the  mystery  and  entanglement  in  the 
actual  world  around  him.  If  he  is  cautious, 
he  may  well  say,  as  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
is  said  to  have  remarked  when  meditating  his 
autobiography:  "I  should  like  to  speak  the 
truth;  but  if  I  do,  I  shall  be  torn  in  pieces." 
If  our  realists  would  say  frankly :  "  We  should 
like  to  draw  plots  such  as  we  have  actually 
known ;  but  we  dare  not  do  it,  let  us  therefore 
abolish  the  plot,"  their  position  would  be  far 
more  intelligible.  Miss  Alcott's  heroine,  in 
writing  her  first  stories,  finds  with  surprise 
that  all  the  things  she  has  taken  straight  from 
real  life  are  received  with  incredulity;  and 
only  those  drawn  wholly  from  her  internal  con 
sciousness  are  believed  at  all.  Life  goes  so 
much  beyond  fiction  that  those  who  are  brought 
up  mainly  on  the  latter  diet  are  more  apt  to 
encounter  something  in  life  which  eclipses  fic 
tion  than  something  which  seems  tame  in  com 
parison.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  when  we 
put  real  events  into  the  form  of  fiction,  they 
seem  over-wrought  and  improbable. 


PROPOSED    ABOLITION    OF   THE   PLOT      141 

Much  of  this  applies,  of  course,  to  charac 
ter  as  well  as  to  plot.  The  seeming  contra 
dictions  in  the  character  of  Hamlet,  over 
which  the  critics  have  wrangled  for  a  century 
or  two,  are  not  really  so  great  or  improbable  as 
those  to  be  found  in  many  youths  who  pass  for 
commonplace ;  and  that  man's  experience  is 
limited  who  has  not  encountered,  in  his  time, 
women  of  more  k*  infinite  variety  "  than  Shake 
speare's  Cleopatra.  Character  in  real  life  is 
a  far  more  absorbing  study  than  character  in 
fiction;  and  when  it  comes  to  plot,  fiction  is 
nowhere  in  comparison.  Toss  a  skein  of. thread 
into  the  sea,  and  within  twenty-four  hours  the 
waves  and  the  floating  seaweed  will  have 
tangled  it  into  a  knot  more  perplexing  than 
the  utmost  effort  of  your  hands  can  weave ;  and 
so  the  complex  plots  of  life  are  wound  by  the 
currents  of  life  itself,  not  by  the  romancers. 
If  life  thus  provides  them,  they  are  a  part  of 
life,  and  must  not  be  omitted  when  there  is  a 
pretence  at  its  delineation.  I  once  heard  an 
eloquent  preacher  (\V.  H.  Channing)  express 
the  opinion  that  we  should  spend  a  considerable 
part  of  eternity  in  unravelling  the  strange  his- 


142   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE  NEW   BOOK 

tory  of  one  another's  lives.  It  might  be  easy, 
perhaps,  to  devise  more  profitable  ways  of 
spending  eternity;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  pursuit  he  proposes,  if  we  undertook  it, 
would  occupy  a  good  many  ages  of  that  period. 
It  would  be  necessary,  however,  to  stipulate 
that  none  of  it  should  be  given  to  us  in  the 
form  of  autobiography,  since  we  have  altogether 
too  much  of  that  offered  to  us  in  this  life.  To 
make  our  friends  really  interesting,  we  must 
be  allowed  to  explore  their  secrets  in  spite  of 
them,  and  perhaps  against  their  direct  oppo 
sition. 

Of  course  we  all  view  this  drama  of  life 
around  us  through  a  medium  varying  with  our 
temperaments.  Heine  says  that  he  once  went 
to  see  the  thrilling  tragedy  of  "La  Tour  de 
Nesle,"  in  Paris,  and  sat  behind  a  lady  who 
wore  a  large  hat  of  rose-red  gauze.  The  hat 
obstructed  his  whole  view  of  the  stage ;  he  saw 
the  play  only  through  it,  and  all  the  horror  of 
the  tragedy  was  transformed  by  the  most  cheer 
ful  roselight.  Some  of  us  are  happy  in  having 
this  rose-tinted  veil  in  our  temperaments ;  but 
the  plot  and  the  tragedy  are  there.  "The  inno- 


PROPOSED    ABOLITION    OF    THE    PLOT       143 

cent,"  says  Thoreau  speaking  of  life,  "enjoy 
the  story."  They  should  be  permitted  to  enjoy 
it,  which  they  cannot  do  unless  they  have  it. 
Grant  that  character  is  the  important  thing; 
but  character  will  soon  dwindle  and  its  deline 
ation  grow  less  and  less  interesting,  if  we 
detach  it  from  life.  We  are  all  but  coral- 
insects  or  sea-anemones  forming  a  part  of  one 
great  joint  existence,  and  we  die  and  dry  up  if 
torn  from  the  reef  where  we  belong. 


144   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

XVII 
AMERICAN   TRANSLATORS 

npHE  English-speaking  race  has  a  strong 
instinct  for  translation,  extending  through 
both  its  branches.  Miss  Mitford  says  of  one  of 
her  heroes  in  a  country  town,  "He  translated 
Horace,  as  all  gentlemen  do;  "  and  Mrs.  Austin 
speaks  of  Goethe's  "Faust"  as  "that  untrans 
latable  poem  which  every  Englishman  trans 
lates."  Americans  are  not  behind  their  British 
cousins  in  these  labors;  and  Professor  Boyesen 
—  who,  as  a  Norseman  by  birth  and  an  Ameri 
can  by  adoption,  is  free  of  all  languages  —  has 
written  an  agreeable  paper  in  Book  News ]  on 
the  general  subject  of  translations.  In  this  he 
says  that  America  has  produced  three  of  the 
greatest  translators  of  modern  times;  a  state 
ment  which  every  patriotic  American  would 
perhaps  indorse,  were  he  himself  only  allowed 
to  make  the  selection.  To  two  out  of  three  of 
Mr.  Boyesen's  favorites  I  should  certainly  take 

1  August,  1888. 


AMERICAN    TRANSLATORS  145 

decided  objection;  and,  curiously  enough, 
should  nominate  as  substitutes  two  other 
translators  of  the  very  books  he  selects  as 
test-subjects  for  rendering. 

About  Longfellow  there  can  be  no  difference 
of  opinion.  He  seems  to  me,  as  to  Mr.  Boyesen, 
to  rank  first  among  those  who  have  made  trans 
lations  into  the  English  tongue.  He  alone 
avoids  the  perpetual  difference  between  literal 
and  poetic  versions  by  absolutely  combining 
the  two  methods;  a  thing  which  Mr.  Boyesen 
thinks  —  but,  I  should  say,  mistakenly  —  can 
not  be  done.  Mr.  Boyesen's  dictum  that  "no 
poetic  translation  can  be  good  and  literal  at  the 
same  time,"  is  refuted  by  the  very  existence  of 
Longfellow,  whose  instinct  for  the  transference 
of  his  author's  language  seemed  like  a  sixth 
sense  or  a  special  gift  for  that  one  purpose. 
Placing  side  by  side  his  German  ballads  and 
their  originals,  one  neither  detects  anything  of 
Longfellow  put  in  nor  anything  of  Uhland  or 
Heine  left  out.  The  more  powerful  and  com 
manding  class  of  translators  insert  themselves 
into  the  work  of  their  authors;  thus  Chapman 
so  Chapman izes  Homer  that  in  the  long  run  his 


146   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

version  fails  to  give  pleasure;  and  Fiztgerald 
has  whole  lines  in  his  "Agamemnon"  which 
are  not  in  ^Eschylus  and  are  almost  indistin 
guishable  in  flavor  from  his  "Omar  Khayyam." 
Even  Mrs.  Austin,  in  that  exquisite  version 
quoted  by  Longfellow  in  his  "Hyperion," 
beginning 

"  Many  a  year  is  in  its  grave," 

has  infused  into  it  a  tinge  of  dreamy  sentiment 
slightly  beyond  that  conveyed  by  Uhland  in  the 
original. 

It  is  perhaps  more  beautiful,  as  it  stands, 
than  any  of  Longfellow's  ballad-versions;  but 
it  is  less  perfect  as  a  rendering.  It  is  -possible 
that  Longfellow's  own  method  swerved  a  little, 
in  his  later  years,  toward  over-literalness. 
There  are  many  who  prefer  the  freer  and  more 
graceful  movement  of  his  "Vision  of  Beatrice  " 
in  the  "Ballads  and  other  Poems"  to  the 
stricter  measure  of  the  same  passage  in  his  com 
pleted  translation.  This  last  work  has  truly, 
as  Mr.  Boyesen  says,  an  air  of  constraint;  but 
I  think  he  is  in  error  in  attributing  this  quality 
to  the  influence  of  those  who  met  to  criticise 


AMERICAN"   TRANSLATORS  147 

Longfellow's  work;  it  was  rather  due  to  the 
strong  hold  taken,  by  the  theory  of  a  literal 
rendering,  on  the  poet's  mind.  Over-literal- 
ness  appears  to  be  the  Nemesis  of  a  genius  for 
translating;  the  longer  a  man  works,  the  more 
precise  he  becomes. 

The  second  of  Mr.  Boyesen's  great  American 
translators  is  Bryant ;  and  here  I  should  utterly 
dissent  from  him.  The  best  introduction  to 
Homer  in  English  is  Matthew  Arnold's  "  Essay 
on  Translating  Homer:  "  or  rather  it  would  be. 
but  for  its  needless  and  diffuse  length,  which 
prevents  many  persons  from  really  mastering 
it;  but  I  do  not  see  how  any  one,  after  reading 
it,  can  look  through  a  page  of  Bryant's  version 
without  a  sense  of  its  utter  tameness  and  its 
want  of  almost  all  the  qualities  defined  by 
Arnold  as  essential  to  Homer.  Mr.  Lawton 
has  finely  said,  at  the  beginning  of  his  admir 
able  papers  on  ^Eschylus  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  1  that  uthe  Homeric  poems  offer  us,  as 
it  were,  a  glimpse  of  a  landscape  scene  by  a 
flash  of  lightning.  What  came  before  and 
immediately  after  we  cannot  discern."  But  in 

1  August,  1888. 


148    THE    NEW    WORLD    AND    THE    NEW    BOOK 

Bryant's  translation  there  is  substituted  for  the 
flash  of  lightning  the  very  mildest  moonlight; 
and  there  seems  no  particular  reason,  from  any 
thing  in  the  tone  or  flavor  of  his  narrative, 
why  the  whole  series  of  events  should  not  have 
taken  place  on  Staten  Island.  Mr.  Bryant 
undoubtedly  had,  in  his  youth,  something  of 
Longfellow's  gift  for  translation;  his  early 
Spanish  ballads  had  in  them  much  promise ; 
they  were  as  good  as  Lockhart's,  perhaps  better. 
But  his  "Iliad  "and  "  Odyssey  "  were  an  old 
man's  work,  done  with  mechanical  regularity, 
so  many  lines  a  day ;  and  while  they  are  "  grave 
and  dignified,"  as  his  critic  says,  they  are 
Homer  with  the  fire  of  Homer  —  or,  in  other 
words,  with  Homer  himself  —  left  out.  But 
the  real  translator  of  the  Father  of  Poetry  is, 
in  my  judgment,  one  whom  Mr.  Boyesen  does 
not  name,  and  perhaps  does  not  yet  know,  so 
recently  has  the  first  instalment  of  his  great 
work  appeared —  Prof.  G.  H.  Palmer.  For 
the  last  half-dozen  years  it  has  been  the  greatest 
intellectual  pleasure  afforded  by  a  residence 
near  Harvard  University  to  follow  with  the 
Greek  text  the  public  readings  of  Professor 


AMERICAN  TRANSLATORS  149 

Palmer  from  the  "Odyssey."  These  readings 
were  given  so  simply,  with  such  quiet  and 
sustained  animation,  that  it  all  seemed  like  an 
extempore  performance;  and  all  the  incidents 
were  told  with  such  utter  freshness  that  they 
might  have  just  arrived  as  news  by  telegraph. 
This  English  text  is  published;  it  is  cast,  with 
consummate  art,  in  a  sort  of  rhythmic  prose, 
perfectly  simple,  yet  measured,  and  securing, 
perhaps,  the  nearest  approach  that  can  be  had 
in  English  to  the  actual  rhythm  of  Homer. 
Professor  Palmer  will  now  have  to  solve  the 
further  and  more  difficult  problem,  whether  the 
stronger  and  richer  measure  of  the  "  Iliad  "  can 
be  dealt  with  in  the  same  way.  But  the  work 
already  done  is  one  of  the  monumental  works  of 
American  scholarship;  and  although  it  stands 
to  the  eye  as  a  prose  version,  and  might  at  first 
be  hastily  classed  with  a  translation  so  incom 
parably  inferior  to  it  as  that  of  Butcher  and 
Lang,  yet  it  is  really  as  literal  as  that,  while 
achieving  at  least  half  the  interval,  whatever 
that  may  be,  which  separates  prose  from  poetry. 
Mr.  Boyesen's  third  great  American  trans 
lator  is  Bayard  Taylor.  Here  again  he  seems 


150   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

to  me  to  concede  too  much  to  labor  and  not 
enough  to  genius.  As  a  tour  deforce,  Taylor's 
great  work  is  doubtless  monumental,  and  an 
honor  to  American  scholarship.  I  remember 
with  what  regret  I  noticed  that  there  was  no 
copy  of  it,  ten  years  ago,  in  the  collection 
of  Goethean  literature  in  the  Gothe-Haus  at 
Frankfort,  though  Taylor's  honorary  diploma 
was  there,  and  the  custodian  spoke  of  him  with 
respect.  As  a  translator  of  the  whole  work, 
and  as  a  copious  commentator  and  elucidator 
he  is  entitled  to  great  credit,  although  his 
abundant  notes  are  taken  largely  from  German 
sources,  easily  accessible.  No  Englishman,  at 
any  rate,  has  done  the  same  work  so  well.  But 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  although  the  trans 
lation  of  the  Second  Part  of  "Faust,"  in  the 
original  metres,  taxes  severely  the  ingenuity 
and  adroitness  of  any  workman,  yet  it  is  in 
dealing  with  the  oft-translated  First  Part  that 
the  higher  poetic  qualities  come  in;  and  in  this 
Taylor  has  been  easily  surpassed,  I  should  say, 
by  the  late  Charles  T.  Brooks.  And  while 
Brooks,  it  is  true,  stopped  short  of  the  longer 
and  more  laborious  Second  Part,  yet  he  made 


AMERICAN    TRANSLATORS  151 

up  for  that  by  his  remarkable  series  of  versions 
of  the  yet  more  difficult  work  of  Jean  Paul 
Richter.  These  he  handled,  especially  the 
" Hesperus  "  and  "Titan,"  with  a  felicity  and 
success  unequalled  among  Richter *s  translators ; 
and  it  is  an  illustration  of  the  ignorance  in 
England  of  the  successes  achieved  by  Ameri 
cans  in  this  direction,  that  Mr.  Brooks 's  works 
of  this  series  are  there  so  little  recognized. 
Another  remarkable  American  translator  from 
the  German  is  Charles  G.  Leland,  whose  ver 
sion  of  Heine's  Reisebilder  under  the  name 
of  "  Pictures  of  Travel ''  is  so  extraordinarily 
graphic  and  at  the  same  time  so  literal  that  it 
ought  of  itself  to  achieve  a  permanent  fame  for 
the  author  of  "Hans  Breitmann." 


152   THE  NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 


XVIII 

THE     WESTMINSTER     ABBEY     OF     A 
BOOK    CATALOGUE 


n~^HE  American  visitor  enters  Westminster 
Abbey  prepared  to  be  hushed  in  awe  before 
the  multitude  of  great  names.  To  his  amaze 
ment  he  finds  himself  vexed  and  bored  with 
the  vast  multiplicity  of  small  ones.  He  must 
approach  the  Poets'  Corner  itself  through 
avenues  of.  Browns,  Joneses,  and  Robinsons.  It 
seems  that  even  Westminster  Abbey  affords  no 
test  of  greatness,  nor  do  any  of  the  efforts  to 
ascertain  it  by  any  other  test  succeed  much 
better.  The  balloting  in  various  newspapers 
for  "  the  best  hundred  authors  "  or  "  the  forty 
immortals  "  has  always  turned  out  to  be  limited 
by  the  constituency  of  the  particular  publica 
tion  which  attempted  the  experiment  ;  or  some 
times  even  by  the  action  of  jocose  cliques,  com 
bining  to  force  up  the  vote  of  pet  candidates. 
As  regards  American  authors,  the  great  "Li- 


WESTMINSTER   OF   A    BOOK   CATALOGUE      153 

brary  of  American  Literature  "  of  Stedman  and 
Hutchinson  aims  to  furnish  a  sort  of  West 
minster  Abbey  or  Valhalla,  where  the  relative 
value  of  different  writers  may  be  roughly 
gauged  by  the  number  of  pages  assigned  to 
each  candidate  for  fame.  But  this  again  is 
determined  by  the  taste  of  the  compilers,  and 
their  judgment,  however  catholic,  is  not  infal 
lible.  Still  another  test,  and  one  coming  nearer 
to  a  general  popular  consensus  may  be  sought 
in  the  excellent  catalogues  which  are  now  pre 
pared  for  our  public  libraries  —  catalogues  in 
which  the  list  of  each  author's  works  is  supple 
mented  by  appending  the  titles  of  all  books  or 
parts  of  books  written  about  him ;  not  usually 
including,  however,  magazine  or  newspaper 
articles.  By  simply  counting  the  entries  of 
this  subsidiary  literature  which  has  already 
grown  up  around  each  eminent  man,  we  can 
obtain  a  certain  rough  estimate  of  the  extent 
and  variety  of  interest  inspired  by  him  in  the 
public  mind. 

Let  us  take,  for  instance,  one  of  the  best  and 
most  recent  of  these  catalogues  —  the  large 
quarto  volume  which  enumerates  the  English 


154    THE   NEW    WOULD    AND   THE    NEW  BOOK 

books  in  the  Cleveland  (Ohio)  public  library. 
This   selection    is  made   partly  because  of  the 
thoroughness  and  excellence  of  the  work  itself, 
and    partly    because,    as    Emerson    once    said, 
"Europe  stretches  to    the    Alleghanies,"  and, 
by  going   west  of  them,   we  at  least  rid  our 
selves  of  any  possible  prejudices  of  the  Atlantic 
border.     I   have   carefully  counted  the   list  of 
entries  in  this  catalogue  under  the  names  of 
many  prominent    Americans   not   now    living; 
and  the  results   have  been  such  as  to  surprise 
not   merely  the   present   writer,    but   all   with 
whom  he  has  compared  notes.     No  person  to 
whom  he  has   put  the   question    has   yet   suc 
ceeded  in  hitting,   at  a   guess,    the  first   four 
names  upon  the  list  presently  to  be  given ;  the 
list,    that  is,  of  those  under  whose  names  the 
entry  of  biographical  and  critical   literature  is 
largest.     The  actual  table,  arranged  in  order  of 
pre-eminence,  is  as  follows,  the  number  follow 
ing    each    name    representing   the    number   of 
books,  or  parts  of  books,  referring  to  the  person 
named,  and  enumerated  in  the  Cleveland  cata 
logue.     The  actual  works  of  the  author  himself 
are  not  included.     The  list  is  as  follows :  — 


WESTMINSTER  OF  A  BOOK  CATALOGUE   155 

Washington 48 

Emerson,  Lincoln  (each)       .        .        .      -  ...  41 

Franklin 37 

Webster  .     •'"'.        .'      -/'      .        .        .        .        .  34 

Longfellow      .        .  .        .        .        .        .  33 

Hawthorne      .        .        .        .       • .        ....  25 

Jefferson         .        .  .        .        .        .        .  23 

Grant       .       '.    >.        .  '     .       :."    .        .    •-.  22 

Irving     .        ^        .        .        .        .        .        .        .  21 

Clay         .        .       ,.        ...        .        .        .        .  19 

Beecher,  Foe,  M.  F.  Ossoli  (each)         .        .        .  16 

Theodore  Parker,  Lowell  (each)     ...        .  15 

John  Adams,  Sumner  (each)          .        .        ....  14 

Cooper,  Greeley,  Sheridan,  Sherman  (each)          ,  12 

Everett 11 

John  Brown,  Channing.  Farragut  (each)     .         .  10 

Garrison,  Hamilton,  Prescott,  Seward,  Taylor  (each)  9 

Thoreau .        .        ...        .        .        ...  7 

Bancroft .  6 

Allston    .        .        ..        ...'.        .  5 

Edwards,  Motley  (each) 5 

This  list  certainly  offers  to  the  reader  some 
surprises  in  its  details,  but  it  must  impress 
every  one,  after  serious  study,  as  giving  a 
demonstration  of  real  intelligence  and  catho 
licity  of  taste  in  the  nation  whose  literature  it 
represents.  When,  for  instance,  we  consider 
the  vast  number  of  log  cabins  or  small  farm 
houses  where  the  name  of  Lincoln  is  a  household 
word,  while  that  of  Emerson  is  as  unknown  as 


156  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

that  of  ^Eschylus  or  Catullus,  one  cannot  help 
wondering  that  there  should  have  been  as  many 
books  written  —  so  far  as  this  catalogue  indi 
cates  —  about  the  recluse  scholar  as  about  the 
martyr-president.  The  prominence  of  Wash 
ington  and  Franklin  was  to  be  expected,  but  that 
Longfellow  should  come  so  near  Webster,  and 
that  both  he  and  Hawthorne  should  distinctly 
precede  Jefferson  and  Grant,  affords  surely 
some  sensations  of  surprise.  Again,  there  is 
something  curious  in  the  fact  that  Poe  should 
stand  "bracketed,"  as  they  say  of  examination 
papers,  with  the  Margaret  Fuller  whom  he  de 
tested;  that  the  classic  Everett  should  fall  so 
far  below  the  radical  Parker;  and  that  Dr. 
Channing  and  John  Brown,  the  antipodes  of 
each  other  as  to  temperament,  should  rank 
together  on  the  returns.  But  all  must  agree 
that  these  figures  reflect,  to  a  greater  degree 
than  one  would  have  expected,  the  actual  prom 
inence  of  these  various  personages  in  the  public 
mind;  and  could  the  table  include  a  number 
of  printed  catalogues  instead  of  one,  it  really 
would  afford  as  fair  an  approximation  as  we 
are  likely  to  obtain  to  a  National  gallery  of 
eminent  persons. 


WESTMINSTER   OF  A  BOOK  CATALOGUE      157 

It  is  easily  to  be  seen  that  no  similar  gallery 
of  living  persons  would  have  much  value.  It 
is  not,  ordinarily,  until  after  a  man's  death  that 
serious  criticism  or  biography  begins.  Com 
paring  a  few  living  names,  we  find  that  there 
are  already,  in  the  Cleveland  catalogue,  sub 
sidiary  references  to  certain  living  persons,  as 
follows :  — 

Holmes,  Whittier    .        .        .                      .....  12 

Mrs.  Stowe .  8 

Whitman 5 

Ex-President  Cleveland  .        .        ...  4 

Harte        .        .        ...        .        ...  3 

Elaine,  Howells,  James  .        .        .        .        .  2 

Hale,  Farkman        .        .        .        .        .  1 

These  figures,  so  far  as  they  go,  exhibit  the 
same  combination  of  public  and  literary  service 
with  those  previously  given.  Like  those,  they 
effectually  dispose  of  the  foolish  tradition  that 
republican  government  tends  to  a  dull  medioc 
rity.  Here  we  see  a  people  honoring  by  silent 
suffrages  their  National  leaders,  and  recording 
the  votes  in  the  catalogue  of  every  town  library. 
There  is  no  narrow  rivalry  between  literature 
and  statesmanship,  or  between  either  of  these 


158    THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

and  military  qualities,  but  all  leaders  are  recog 
nized  for  what  they  have  given.  The  result  is 
a  tribute  to  that  natural  inequality  of  men 
which  is  as  fully  recognized,  in  a  true  republic, 
as  their  natural  equality ;  that  is,  they  are  equal 
in  the  sense  of  being  equally  men,  but  not 
equal  in  their  gifts  as  men.  It  is  curious  to 
see  how  the  social  falsities  of  English  society 
tell  on  educated  Englishmen,  so  surely  as  they 
grow  old  enough  to  shed  the  generous  impulses 
of  youth.  It  Avas  in  vain  that  Tennyson  wrote 
"Clara  Vere  de  Vere,"  and  Froude  "The 
Nemesis  of  Faith,"  and  Ruskin  "Modern 
Painters,"  and  Swinburne  the  "Song  in  Time 
of  Order:  "  let  them  once  reach  middle  life  and 
they  are  all  stanch  Tories  and  "accept  dukes; " 
and  now  Huxley  follows  in  their  train.  But 
here  in  America  we  find  no  difficulty  in  select 
ing  our  natural  leaders,  sooner  or  later,  and 
owning  them;  they  do  not  have  to  fight  for 
recognition,  in  most  cases;  it  comes  by  a  pro 
cess  like  the  law  of  gravitation. 

In  our  colonial  town  records  the  object  of  the 
meeting  was  often  stated  as  being  "  to  know  the 
Town's  Mind  "  on  certain  questions ;  the  Town's 


WESTMINSTER   OF   A    BOOK   CATALOGUE      159 

Mind  being  always  written  with  capitals  and 
"mentioned  with  reverence,  as  if  it  were  a  dis 
tinguished  person,  hard  to  move."  The  result 
of  this  unconscious  selection  in  the  book  cata 
logues  is  to  give  us  the  Nation's  Mind  in 
regard  to  our  foremost  men.  As  time  goes 
on,  the  decision  varies;  some  reputations  hold 
out  better,  some  less  well ;  the  relative  position 
of  Dr.  Channing,  for  instance,  has  changed 
a  good  deal  within  fifty  years,  and  so  has  that 
of  Henry  Clay;  but  in  the  end  the  scale  settles 
itself  and  remains  tolerably  permanent.  And 
there  is  this  advantage  in  a  hierarchy  of  intel 
lect  and  public  service  thus  established,  that  it 
does  not  awaken  the  antagonism  which  follows 
an  hereditary  aristocracy;  and  that  if  the  sons 
of  these  eminent  persons  do  not  distinguish 
themselves,  they  are  simply  ignored  and  passed 
by,  whereas  under  a  hereditary  aristocracy  their 
high  position  may  be  a  curse  to  the  community. 
This  Westminster  Abbey  of  the  newspapers 
excites  no  such  feelings  as  Heine  confesses 
himself  to  have  experienced  among  the  graves 
of  the  crowned  heads  at  Westminster  Abbey  in 
London.  He  tells  us  that  he  did  not  grudge 


160   THE   NEW    WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

the  eighteen  pence  he  had  paid  to  see  them; 
but  told  the  verger  that  he  was  delighted  with 
his  exhibition,  and  would  willingly  have  paid 
as  much  more  to  see  the  collection  complete. 


TOWN   AND   GOWN  161 

XIX 

TOWN   AND   GOWN 

TOURING  the  two  years  when  the  writer  was 
a  member  of  a  State  legislature,  he  was 
often  asked  if  he  did  not  encounter  a  certain 
widely  spread  prejudice  against  college-bred 
men.  Truth  compelled  him  to  reply  that  he 
did,  but  that  it  almost  always  proceeded  from 
other  college-bred  men.  Having  all  his  life 
been  in  the  habit  of  attending  caucuses  and 
political  meetings,  and  having  very  often  pre 
sided  over  them,  he  has  had  some  opportunity 
of  testing  the  alleged  prejudice  of  the  unedu 
cated  against  the  more  educated,  in  a  demo 
cratic  community,  and  he  can  truly  say  that  he 
never  happened  to  encounter  it;  but  he  has 
very  often  encountered  the  attempt  to  create  it 
among  those  who  should  have  known  better. 
In  the  close  contests  of  politics  there  is  often  a 
temptation  to  find  a  weapon  against  an  oppo 
nent  in  the  charge  of  being  college-bred  or 
having  written  a  book;  but  the  persons  who 


162   THE   NEW   WORLD    AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

yield  to  this  temptation  are  mostly  those  who 
have  themselves  suffered  from  a  similar  im 
peachment,  and  fancy  that  they  can  score  a 
point  by  turning  States'  evidence  on  their  own 
training.  But  I  have  never  seen  that  the  effort 
had  more  than  a  very  temporary  influence  in 
the  community  at  large;  and  this  for  obvious 
reasons. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  very  little  of  this 
prejudice  among  the  poorer  classes  in  any 
American  community,  for  these  classes  are, 
whether  Protestants  or  Catholics,  not  yet  very 
remote  from  the  time  when  they  reverenced 
their  clergy,  and  when  this  body  represented 
leadership  in  all  the  walks  of  life.  Among  the 
Puritans,  as  is  well  known,  the  colleges  existed 
to  train  clergymen,  and  the  clergy  existed  to 
fill  all  the  posts  of  leadership.  There  was  no 
separate  legal  profession,  for  instance;  and 
Chief  Justice  Sewall  —  whose  racy  journals 
make  him  the  more  sombre  Pepys  of  the  New 
England  Colonial  period  —  was  educated  for 
the  ministry  and  took  a  seat  on  the  bench  by 
way  of  collateral  pursuit,  precisely  as  he  ac 
cepted  the  command  of  the  Ancient  and  Honor- 


TOWN   AND    GOWN  163 

able  Artillery  Company  and  paraded  with  it  on 
the  Boston  Common.  Professor  Goodale,  the 
Harvard  botanist,  has  lately  shown  that  the 
beginnings  of  natural  science  in  the  curriculum 
of  that  institution  were  due  to  the  fact,  that 
being  organized  for  the  rearing  of  Christian 
ministers  it  must  give  them  some  knowledge  of 
anatomy  and  the  Materia  Medica,  in  order  that 
they  might  prescribe  for  their  sick  parishioners. 
Even  business  matters  were  to  some  extent 
within  their  grasp,  and  this  lasted  into  this  cen 
tury.  An  eminent  lawyer,  distinguished  for  his 
skill  in  the  charge  of  great  trust  properties,  hav 
ing  lately  died  in  Boston,  I  was  calling  atten 
tion  to  the  fact  that  when  I  knew  him,  in  college, 
he  never  gave  the  slightest  sign  of  peculiar 
business  aptitude;  but  I  was  at  once  told 
by  one  who  had  known  his  father,  a  country 
clergyman,  that  this  good  pastor  was  the  busi 
ness  adviser  of  his  whole  parish,  and  did  for 
rural  traders  what  his  son  afterward  did  for 
great  capitalists.  Thus  much  for  the  Protest 
ant  side;  and  among  our  Catholic  citizens  it 
is  so  the  custom  to  see  the  clergy  intrusted 
with  great  financial  responsibilities,  that  no 


164  THE  NEW   WORLD   AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

sneer  against  educated  men  ever  comes  from 
them ;  they  err  on  the  other  side,  in  too  great 
willingness  to  intrust  their  savings  to  their 
spiritual  advisers. 

The  supposed  prejudice  against  the  inca 
pacity  of  men  of  scholarly  pursuits  does  not, 
therefore,  come  from  the  poorer  class,  whether 
Catholic  or  Protestant,  nor  does  it  come  from 
the  great  intermediate  and  powerful  class  of 
the  Silas  Laphams;  on  the  contrary,  the 
college-bred  man  is  more  often  touched  by  a 
certain  covert  and  needless  humility  on  the 
part  of  this  class.  The  organizers  of  labor,  the 
heads  of  great  enterprises,  are  often  mute  and 
timid  before  those  very  much  their  inferiors  in 
real  training,  simply  from  their  consciousness 
that  they  are  weak  in  things  which  are  really 
of  secondary  importance.  Just  as  an  English 
man  who  has  once  discovered  that  he  misplaces 
his  H's  will  sometimes  hold  his  tongue  when 
he  has  things  to  say  more  important  than  all  the 
separate  letters  of  the  alphabet  put  together; 
so  is  it  often  with  the  uneducated  American 
who  seems  to  exult  in  all  the  glory  of  material 
success.  In  the  Massachusetts  Legislature  I 


TOWN    AND   GOWN  165 

have  had  men  come  and  beg  me  to  make  their 
speeches  for  them  in  regard  to  a  certain 
measure,  they  putting  all  the  facts  and  material 
into  my  hands,  although  they  knew  ten  times 
as  much  about  it  as  I,  and  could,  consequently, 
make  a  far  more  effective  speech ;  and  this 
simply  because  they  knew  that  their  verbs  did 
not  always  agree  with  their  nominative  cases, 
and  they  attached  an  exaggerated  importance 
to  this  minor  matter.  Whatever  may  be  the 
defects  of  the  much-discussed  American  tem 
perament,  obtuseness  is  certainly  not  one  of 
them.  The  unschooled  American  recognizes  and 
laments  his  ignorance,  and,  indeed,  commonly 
exaggerates  it ;  that  is,  he  does  not  reflect  that 
he  perhaps  knows  things  which  are  vastly  more 
important  than  the  things  which  he  does  not 
know,  and  which  his  college-bred  neighbor 
knows.  That  is  why  he  sends  his  son  to 
college.  A  friend  of  mine,  a  merchant  by 
training  and  a  most  acute  observer,  had  a 
theory  that  the  college  graduates  did  not  care 
so  very  much  to  send  their  sons  where  they  had 
been,  as  knowing  that  it  had  not  done  very 
much  for  themselves;  but  that  the  non-grad- 


166   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE  NEW  BOOK 

uates  were  very  anxious  to  send  theirs,  because 
they  attributed  their  own  shortcomings  to  the 
want  of  that  early  advantage.  Thus,  he 
reasoned,  every  alternate  generation  goes  to 
the  university. 

In  the  same  way,  I  think  that  the  college- 
bred  man,  or  at  any  rate  the  man  of  literary 
pursuits,  is  apt  to  be  more  humble  for  himself 
than  he  is  wished  by  others  to  be.  It  is  like 
that  curious  self-humiliation,  at  the  beginning 
of  our  Civil  War,  of  those  who  had  not  been 
trained  in  the  militia,  in  presence  of  those  who 
had  received  such  training.  A  book  of  tac 
tics  looked,  when  one  opened  it,  harder  than 
Euclid's  Geometry;  and  it  took  a  little  time 
to  discover  that  it  was,  for  a  man  with  toler 
ably  clear  head,  as  simple  as  the  spelling-book. 
So  the  student  is  apt  to  think  that  the  elemen 
tary  principles  of  business,  or  the  rules  of  par 
liamentary  law,  are  things  requiring  long  and 
difficult  training;  whereas  they  do  not,  in 
acquiring,  prove  very  hard.  Then  it  must  be 
remembered  that,  in  this  country  at  least,  the 
scholar  has  very  commonly  made  his  own  way 
in  the  world  and  has  had  to  develop  the  prac- 


TOWN   AND   GOWN  167 

tical  faculty,  in  a  small  way,  from  the  very 
beginning.  Nothing  is  more  interesting,  in  a 
university  town,  than  to  see  the  variety  of  ante 
cedents,  usually  involving  some  knowledge  of 
men,  with  which  the  older  students  have  come 
together.  In  a  nation  where  small  mechanics 
and  country  shopkeepers  become  millionnaires 
and  presidents,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  student 
whose  early  life  was  perhaps  not  very  differ 
ent  from  theirs  should  also  have  his  practical 
side. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  supposed 
prejudice  against  educated  men  in  practical 
affaire  is  not  confined  to  our  own  country,  .but 
exists  in  England,  in  France,  in  Germany;  and 
in  each  case  with  the  additional  condition 
which  I  have  pointed  out, that  it  is  found  more 
among  other  educated  men  than  in  the  general 
public  mind.  We  think  of  England  as  a  place 
where  they  put  authors  forward  in  public  life; 
and  we  instance  Beaconsfield,  Gladstone, 
Morley,  and  Bryce,  by  way  of  illustration. 
But  the  acute  Sir  Frederick  Elliot  wrote  to  the 
poet  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  in  1876:  "I  think  that 
literati^  when  they  have  not  been  exercised  in 


168    THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

practical  affairs  (note  that  exception !)  are  the 
worst  of  politicians."  He  has  especially  in 
mind  historians,  and  makes  the  point,  which  is 
worth  noticing,  that  they  are  a  little  apt  to 
confound  the  dead  and  the  living.  "Look  at 
Freeman;  he  digs  into  forgotten  records  and 
finds  that  the  ancestors  of  some  people  oppressed 
the  ancestors  of  another,  four  hundred  years 
ago;  upon  which  he  forthwith  exhorts  their 
descendants,  living  in  peace  and  amity,  to  hate 
each  other  now.  Another  is  more  moderate: 
he  only  unearths  the  misgovernment  of  a  hun 
dred  years  ago  as  a  present  motive  for  mutual 
detestation."  In  this  country,  I  should  say, 
this  last  tendency  prevails  most  with  those  who 
are  not  historians,  but  politicians.  A  more 
substantial  drawback  is  the  absorbing  preoccu 
pation  of  both  the  literary  and  the  practical 
life ;  and  the  fact  that  there  are  only  twenty- 
four  hours  in  every  day.  Hamerton  speaks  of 
a  Greek  philosopher,  who  was  suspected  by  the 
business  men  of  incapacity  for  affairs,  but  who 
devoted  a  year  to  proving  the  contrary  and 
traded  with  such  skill  that  he  went  back  to  his 
studies  a  capitalist.  The  practical  man  is 


TOWN   A^sD   GOWN  169 

often  benefited  by  being  forced  into  study,  and 
the  student  by  taking,  when  it  comes  to  him, 
his  share  in  practical  affairs ;  but  no  one  sup 
poses  that  their  work,  "in  the  long  run,  can 
advantageously  change  hands. 


170   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 


XX 

"MAKE    THY   OPTION   WHICH    OF 
TWO" 

TTTHO  does  not  look  back  with  some  slight 
envy  to  the  period  when  Professor 
Popkin  could  dwell  with  longing  on  that 
coming  day  when  he  could  retire  from  his 
Harvard  Professorship  of  Greek  and  "  read  the 
authors  "  ?  He  actually  resigned  in  1833,  and 
had  for  nearly  twenty  years  the  felicity  for 
which  he  longed.  What  he  meant  by  reading 
the  authors  was  well  enough  exhibited  in  that 
contemporary  English  clergyman,  described  in 
Hogg's  "  Life  of  Shelley,"  who  devoted  all  his 
waking  hours  for  thirty  years  to  a  regular  course 
of  Greek  writers.  He  arranged  them  in  a  three 
years'  course,  and  when  they  were  ended  he 
began  again.  The  only  exception  was  in  case 
of  Homer,  whose  works  he  read  every  year  for 
a  month  at  the  seashore  —  "  the  proper  place  to 
read  Homer,"  he  said ;  and,  as  he  also  pointed 
out,  there  were  twenty-four  week-days  in  a 


"MAKE   THY   OPTION   WHICH   OF   TWO*'     171 

month,  and  by  taking  a  book  of  the  "  Iliad " 
before  dinner,  and  a  book  of  the  "  Odyssey " 
after  dinner,  he  just  finished  his  pleasant  task. 
On  rainy  days,  when  he  could  not  walk,  he 
threw  in  the  Homeric  hymns ;  he  moreover 
read  a  newspaper  once  a  week,  and  occasionally 
ran  through  a  few  pages  of  Virgil  and  Cicero, 
just  to  satisfy  himself  that  it  was  a  waste  of 
time  for  any  one  who  could  read  Greek  to  look 
at  anything  else.  Simple  and  perennial  feli 
city  !  no  vacillation,  no  variableness  or  shadow 
of  turning ;  no  doubting  between  literature  or 
science,  still  less  between  this  or  that  depart 
ment  of  literature.  Since  all  advisers  bid  us 
read  only  the  best  books,  why  not  follow  their 
counsel,  and  keep  to  JEschylus  and  Homer  ? 

Who  could  have  foreseen,  in  Dr.  Popkin's  day, 
the  vast  expansion  of  modern  literatures,  which, 
after  exhausting  all  the  Latin  races,  keeps  open 
ing  upon  us  new  treasure-houses  elsewhere  ;  so 
that  Mr.  Howells  would  bid  us  all  learn  Russian 
and  Mr.  Boyesen  the  Scandinavian  tongues. 
Who  could  have  foreseen  the  relentless  Max 
Miiller,  marshalling  before  us  by  dozens  the 
Oriental  religions ;  and  Mr.  Fitzgerald  concen- 


172   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

trating  the  wonders  of  them  all  into  "  Omar 
Khayyam,"  who  offers  no  religion  whatever, 
and  makes  denial  more  eloquent  than  faith? 
Who  had  then  dreamed  of  the  Shakespearian 
literature,  the  Dantean  literature,  the  Goethean 
literature ;  even  the  literature  of  Petrarch,  as 
catalogued  by  Prof.  Willard  Fiske,  to  the 
extent  of  nearly  a  thousand  entries  ?  Who  had 
looked  forward  to  vast  American  historical 
works  like  Hubert  Bancroft's  fifty  ample  vol 
umes  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  or  Winsor's  "  Narra 
tive  and  Critical  History  of  America  "  ?  Who 
had  imagined  the  vast  spread  of  magazine 
literature  and  of  newspaper  literature,  threaten 
ing,  as  Mr.  Holt  the  publisher  predicts,  to 
swamp  all  study  of  books  beneath  a  vast  deluge 
of  serials  and  periodicals,  to  be  traversed  here 
after  only  with  the  aid  of  literary  rafts,  charts, 
and  compasses  ?  And  then,  when  all  this  is 
enumerated,  there  is  science,  claiming  itself  to 
monopolize  the  intellectual  world  and  sometimes 
intimating  doubts  whether  the  function  of 
literature  itself  be  not  at  an  end. 

In  the  very  college  where  the  peaceful  Popkin 
once  taught,  there  are  now  twenty-one  distinct 


"MAKE  THY  OPTION    WHICH   OF   TWO  "     178 

elective  courses  in  Greek  alone ;  and  in  all 
undergraduate  branches  not  less  than  two  hun 
dred  and  thirty  —  each  course  offering  occupa 
tion  enough  for  a  whole  term's  study,  and  some 
of  them  for  that  of  a  whole  life.  The  "  option 
which  of  two "  described  by  Emerson  as  the 
painful  necessity  of  later  years,  is  here  initiated 
in  the  earliest ;  and  it  is  even  proposed  to  carry 
it  yet  further  into  the  preparatory  schools  by  the 
alternative  standards  of  admission.  Even  in 
Greek  a  single  mood  or  tense  of  the  verb  is  held 
to  furnish  material  for  a  treatise ;  and  so  of 
every  division  and  sub-division  of  all  knowledge. 
Baron  Osten  Sacken.  the  entomologist,  who 
during  his  stay  in  this  country  was  our  highest 
authority  on  the  Diptera,  or  two-winged  insects, 
always  maintained  that  he  had  erred  in  marking 
out  a  range  of  study  too  vast  for  any  single 
intellect ;  and  that  he  should  have  done  better 
to  confine  himself  to  some  one  family,  as  for 
instance,  the  Culicidce,  or  gnats.  There  was 
nothing  extreme  in  this  confession  ;  it  might  be 
paralleled  in  every  department  of  study.  But 
meanwhile  what  becomes  of  "  the  authors  "  ? 
I  am  not  now  speaking  with  any  special 


174  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

reference  to  the  Greeks.  The  fate  of  the 
ancient  classics  among  us  was  long  since  settled. 
When  the  successor  of  Dr.  Popkin  was  made 
President  of  Harvard  College,  in  1860,  he 
virtually  surrendered  his  traditions  by  translat 
ing  the  Greek  quotations  in  his  Inaugural 
Address  ;  and  what  President  Felton  did  for  the 
elder  language,  President  Eliot  did  for  the 
Latin  when  he,  at  the  250th  anniversary  of 
that  institution,  bestowed  the  honorary  degrees 
in  most  sonorous  English.  Grant  that  the 
"  authors  "  now  share  with  all  other  writers,  in 
all  languages  and  departments,  the  limitations  of 
the  life  of  man,  it  is  plain  that  those  limitations 
bring  the  greatest  change  to  those  two  languages 
which  were  once  thought  to  hold  all  knowledge 
in  their  grasp.  But  the  same  stern  restriction 
makes  itself  felt  in  all  directions ;  the  age  has 
outgrown  its  few  simple  and  convenient  play 
things,  and  must  choose  amid  a  myriad  of 
edgetools. 

There  will  never  be  another  universal  scholar. 
The  time  when  Aristotle  or  Plutarch  went  the 
rounds  of  the  universe,  and  tried  to  label  each 
phenomenon,  looks  now  like  the  childhood  of 


"  MAKE   THY   OPTION    WHICH    OF   TWO "     175 

the  world,  no  matter  how  precocious  the  chil 
dren.  The  period  when  Bacon  sought  to  imi 
tate  them  is  scarcely  nearer;  and  when  that 
great  intellect  found  itself  so  overweighted  with 
the  visible  facts,  it  seems  unkind  for  Mr. 
Donnelly  to  burden  him  retrospectively  with 
even  one  cipher  more.  The  omnivorous  stu 
dent,  who  would  gladly  keep  the  touch  of  all 
branches  of  knowledge,  finds  them  steadily 
slipping  away  from  him,  and  may  be  glad  if  he 
can  watch  with  fidelity  the  newest  developments 
in  some  single  minute  field,  such  as  fossil  cock 
roaches  or  the  genitive  case.  It  is  useless  for 
Mr.  Cabot  to  tell  us  that  Emerson  was  not  a 
great  scholar ;  we  knew  it  already.  He  could 
not  in  this  age  have  been  a  great  scholar  and  a 
great  writer.  Thoreau  resolutely  limited  him 
self  to  the  observation  of  external  nature  in  one 
small  township  in  Massachusetts ;  and  he 
assigned  himself  a  task  so  far  beyond  his  grasp 
that  we  find  him  in  his  diaries  puzzling  over  the 
common  brown  cocoon  of  the  Attacus  moth  as 
if  it  was  some  wholly  new  phenomenon  ;  indeed, 
he  seems  scarcely  to  have  noticed  the  insect 
world  at  all.  The  best-trained  observation,  in 


176    THE    NEW    WOULD    AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

presence  of  the  vast  advance  of  knowledge,  is 
very  limited ;  and  the  human  memory,  instead 
of  being,  as  people  think,  an  india-rubber  bag 
of  indefinite  expansion,  is  much  more  like  those 
pop-guns  made  by  boys,  which  are  loaded  with 
a  bit  of  potato  at  one  end,  and  another  bit  at 
the  other,  but  never  by  any  chance  hold  more 
than  two  bits  of  potato  at  the  same  time. 

The  acquisition  of  knowledge  is,  after  all,  a 
process  of  selection  rather  than  of  collection. 
We  forget  as  fast  as  we  learn,  and  it  is  doubtful 
if  the  most  learned  man  really  knows  more  at 
fifty  than  at  twenty ;  he  has  merely  driven  out 
a  multitude  of  insignificant  details  by  those  of 
greater  value.  The  travelling  sabsman  and  the 
horse-car  conductor  are  probably  possessed  of  as 
many  items  of  detached  knowledge  as  Von 
Humboldt  or  Darwin ;  the  difference  is  in  their 
quality  and  their  use.  It  was  one  of  Margaret 
Fuller's  acutest  sayings  that  a  man  who  expects 
to  accomplish  much  in  the  world  must  learn 
after  five  and  twenty  to  read  with  his  fingers. 
Dr.  Johnson,  who  said  to  the  man  who  thanked 
God  for  his  ignorance,  "  Then,  sir,  you  have  a 
great  deal  to  be  thankful  for,"  was  in  a  similar 


"MAKE   THY   OPTION   WHICH   OF   TWO  "     177 

position  to  the  person  at  whom  he  sneered,  but 
was  less  frank  in  his  ascriptions  of  gratitude. 
The  elder  Agassiz  once  said  to  me  that  so  vast 
was  becoming  the  multiplicity  of  publications 
in  every  branch  of  science,  the  time  was 
approaching  when  no  man  would  be  able  to 
write  on  any  subject  with  the  slightest  sense  of 
security.  The  hope  is  that  by  new  intellectual 
facilities  in  the  way  of  labor-saving  methods, 
the  human  mind  may  become  enabled  to  keep 
pace  in  some  degree  with  this  multiplying  mass 
of  studious  materials,  just  as  it  keeps  pace  with 
vaster  and  vaster  executive  enterprises.  It  is 
pleasant  to  think,  also,  that  the  wider  the  range 
of  fascinating  knowledge,  the  stronger  becomes 
the  argument  for  continued  personal  identity. 
Next  to  the  yearnings  of  human  affection,  the 
most  irresistible  suggestion  of  immortality 
comes  from  looking  up  at  the  unattainable 
mystery  of  the  stars. 


178   THE   NEW   WOULD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 


XXI 

THE    DECLINE    OF    THE    SENTI 
MENTAL 

A  T  a  private  charitable  reading,  held  lately 
in  Boston,  it  was  noticed  that  the  younger 
part  of  the  audience  responded  but  slightly  in 
the  way  of  sympathy  to  Dr.  Holmes's  poem  on 
the  Moore  Festival,  while  to  the  older  guests 
the  allusions  seemed  all  very  familiar  and  even 
touching.  The  waning  of  sympathy  for  Moore 
and  his  "  Irish  Melodies "  simply  shows  the 
diminished  hold  of  the  sentimental  upon  us, 
taking  that  word  to  represent  a  certain  rather 
melodramatic  self-consciousness,  a  tender  intro 
spection  in  the  region  of  the  heart,  a  kind  of 
studious  cosseting  of  one's  finer  feelings.  Per 
haps  it  is  not  generally  recognized  how  much 
more  abundant  was  this  sort  of  thing  forty  years 
ago  than  now,  and  how  it  moulded  the  very 
temperaments  of  those  who  were  born  into  it, 
and  grew  up  under  it.  Byron  had  as  much  to 
do  with  creating  it  as  any  one  in  England ;  but 


THE   DECLINE   OF   THE   SENTIMENTAL      179 

more  probably  it  goes  back  to  Rousseau  in 
France  ;  hardly,  I  should  think  to  Petrarch,  to 
whom  Lowell  is  disposed  to  attribute  it,  and 
who  certainly  exerted  very  little  influence  in  the 
way  of  sentimentality  on  his  friend  Chaucer. 
But  the  Byronic  atmosphere  certainly  spread  to 
Germany,  as  may  be  seen  by  the  place  conceded 
to  that  poet  in  Goethe's  "  Faust ;  "  although 
Goethe's  "  Werther,"  and  Schiller's  "Die 
Rauber  "  showed  that  the  tendency  itself  was 
at  one  time  indigenous  everywhere.  In  England, 
Bulwer  and  the  younger  Disraeli  aimed  to  be 
prose  Byrons ;  and  in  Moore  and  Mrs.  Hemans, 
followed  by  Mrs.  Norton  and  "L.  E.  L.,"  we  see 
the  sentimental  spirit  in  successive  degrees  of 
dilution. 

All  the  vocal  music  of  forty  or  fifty  years  ago 
—  when  the  great  German  composers  were  but 
just  beginning  to  make  their  power  felt  in  this 
country  —  was  of  an  intensely  sentimental  de 
scription  ;  delightfully  so,  I  might  add,  for  those 
who  were  brought  up  to  that  kind  of  enjoy 
ment.  Moore's  songs,  such  as  "  Believe  Me  if 
all  those  Endearing  Young  Charms,"  ki  Fly,  fly 
from  the  World,  O  Bessv,  with  Me,"  "The 


180    THE   NEW    WOULD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

Harp  that  once  through  Tara's  Halls,"  and  a 
score  of  others,  set  the  popular  key-note;  and 
even  his  hymns,  such  as  "  Come,  Ye  Disconso 
late,"  had  a  similar  flavor.  The  whole  vocal 
literature  of  the  day  held  the  same  pitch.  Such 
songs  as  "  Go  Thou  and  dream,"  "  Take  hence 
the  Bowl,"  "  My  Soul  is  Dark,"  "  The  Evening 
Gun,"  "  Those  Fairy  Bells,"  were  sung  in  every 
drawing-room,  by  a  class  of  private  singers  more 
impassioned  and  more  ardently  dramatic  than 
one  now  hears  anywhere,  and  whose  singing 
afforded  a  training  in  the  emotional  such  as  no 
experience  of  to-day  can  give.  Their  strength 
would  now  be  considered  a  weakness ;  the  ex 
quisite  German  songs  that  now  prevail,  while 
far  higher  in  musical  quality,  offer  human  feel 
ing  itself  in  a  purer,  simpler,  and  doubtless 
nobler  form;  but  the  die-away  period  had  its 
own  fascination  —  the  period  when  even  the 
military  bands  marched  to  the  plaintive  strains 
of  Mrs.  Norton's  "  Love  Not." 

In  prose  literature,  as  has  been  said,  Bulwer 
and  Disraeli  best  represented  that  epoch.  The 
two  fashionable  novels,  par  excellence,  of  a 
whole  generation,  were  "  Pelham  "  and  "  Vivian 


THE   DECLINE   OF   THE   SENTIMENTAL      181 

Grey."  In  the  latter,  all  the  heights  of  foppery 
and  persiflage  did  but  set  off  what  was  then 
regarded  as  the  unsurpassable  pathos  of  "  Violet 
Fane's "  death :  and  though  the  consummate 
dandyism  of  the  companion  book  had  no  such 
relief,  yet  Bulwer  amply  made  up  for  it  by  the 
rivers  of  tears  that  were  shed  over  his  "Pil 
grims  of  the  Rhine."  Not  a  young  lover  of  the 
period  who  had  acquired  a  decent  sentimental 
education,  but  was  sure  to  put  a  flower  between 
the  leaves  of  that  work  where  the  author  says : 
44  Is  there  one  of  us  who  has  not  known  a  being 
for  whom  it  would  seem  none  too  wild  a  fan 
tasy,  to  indulge  such  a  dream  ?  "  Yes,  yes, 
Bulwer !  interpreter  of  one's  visions,  everybody 
had  known  such  an  object  of  emotion ;  and  a 
thousand  plain  Susans  and  Sarahs  stood  forever 
enshrined  in  that  romantic  creation  —  "the 
beautiful  ideal  of  the  world" — when  death,  or 
a  luckier  lover,  or  parental  obduracy,  or  the 
mere  accident  of  a  family  removal  from  New 
York  to  Cincinnati,  had  banished  them  from  the 
regions  of  every  day.  Far  be  it  from  me  to 
speak  writh  disrespect  of  these  emotions ;  it  will 
presently  be  shown  that  they  had  many  advan- 


182   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

tages ;  but  in  their  full  and  unquestioned  vigor 
they  certainly  belonged  to  the  period  when  men 
wore  cravats  swathed  half  a  dozen  times  round 
the  neck,  and  when,  as  the  author  of  "  Pelham  " 
wrote,  there  was  safety  in  a  swallow-tail. 

It  is  not  in  the  English  tongue  alone  that 
this  emotional  tendency  was  expressed,  for 
Lamartine  was  then  much  read,  and  even  his 
travels  in  the  East  were  saturated  with  it ;  and 
so  were  the  writings  of  Jean  Paul,  who  then 
rivalled  Goethe  in  the  affections  of  the  newly 
enrolled  students  of  German.  His  "  Siebenkas  " 
which  avowedly  records  the  "life,  death,  and 
wedding"  of  a  hero  who  deliberately  counter 
feits  death,  that  he  and  his  mismated  wife  may 
each  espouse  the  object  of  a  loftier  tenderness, 
was  the  climax  of  the  sentimental ;  and  yet  this 
preposterous  situation  was  so  seriously  and 
sympathetically  painted,  that  probably  no  one 
who  read  the  book  at  that  day  can  now  revert 
to  it  without  emotion.  But  it  is  necessary  to 

bear  all  this  in  mind  in  order  to  understand  how 

» 

all  this  atmosphere  of  exaggerated  feeling 
seemed  blown  away  in  an  instant  by  the  first 
appearance  of  Sam  Weller  on  the  scene. 


THE   DECLINE   OF   THE   SENTIMENTAL      183 

Dickens  himself  bore  marked  traces  of  the  very 
epidemic  he  banished,  and  his  Little  Nells  and 
Little  Pauls  were  the  last  survival  of  the  senti 
mental  period  ;  but  nevertheless,  it  was  he,  more 
than  any  one  else,  who  exorcised  it ;  and  what 
ever  its  merits,  he  rendered  the  world  a  service 
in  that  act  of  grace. 

Yet  no  one  can  really  regret,  I  should  say,  to 
have  been  born  during  that  earlier  period ;  it 
suffused  life  with  a  certain  charm  :  and  though 
it  may  sometimes  have  prematurely  exhausted 
the  heart,  it  oftener  kept  it  young.  For  as  we 
grow  older  we  revert  to  the  associations  of 
our  youth ;  what  prevailed  then  seems  always 
desirable ;  if  our  youth  was  a  period  of  com 
pression,  our  age  is  doubly  such,  but  if  that 
early  period  had  emotional  freedom  and 
epanchement,  our  old  age  will  have  the  same. 
Those  who  were  in  the  current  of  the  trans 
cendental  movement  that  swept  through 
Europe  and  America  half  a  century  ago,  will 
probably  always  have  a  touch  of  sentimentalism 
in  their  sympathies,  a  little  exuberance  some 
where,  even  when  the  outside  is  hard  or  con 
strained  ;  and  even  those  who  belong  to  a  later 


184:   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

school  may  show  traces  of  that  which  prevailed 
when  they  were  in  their  cradles,  as  Howells's 
volume  of  poems  opens  with  the  sentimental 
and  even  beautiful  strains  of  "  Forlorn."  This, 
then,  was  the  path  through  which  he  came  to 
Silas  Lapham  and  Lemuel  Barker;  and  very 
likely,  when  Mr.  Henry  James's  biography 
comes  to  be  written,  he  may  yet  be  found  to 
have  begun  by  taking  tremulous  footsteps  in 
some  such  romantic  path.  After  all,  sentimen- 
talism  is  a  thing  immortal,  for  it  represents  the 
slight  overplus  and  excess  of  youthful  emotion ; 
it  bears  the  same  relation  to  the  deeper  feelings 
of  later  life  that  the  college  contests  of  the  foot 
ball  ground  bear  to  life's  conflicts.  Tennyson, 
who  began  by  representing  it,  and  then,  with  a 
hand  far  finer  than  that  of  Dickens,  helped  to 
guide  us  out  of  it,  has  unconsciously  described 
the  service  done  to  the  age  by  the  epoch  of 
sentimentalism  when  he  paints  in  his  "  Gar 
dener's  Daughter,"  the  mission  fulfilled  by 
Juliet,  the  earliest  object  of  his  flame  :  — 

"  The  summer  pilot  of  an  empty  heart 
Unto  the  shores  of  nothing.     Know  you  not 
Such  touches  are  but  embassies  of  love 
To  tamper  with  the  feelings,  ere  he  found 
Empire  for  life?" 


CONCERNING   GIANTS  185 

XXII 
CONCERNING   GIANTS 

shows  the  way  in  which  fame 
concentrates  itself  on  certain  leading 
figures  more  effectually  than  an  inspection  of 
book  catalogues.  For  instance,  the  British 
Museum  catalogue  gives  fifty-eight  folio  pages 
—  with  double  columns  and  small  type  —  to  its 
Dante  entries.  The  forthcoming  catalogue  of 
the  Dante  collection  in  the  Harvard  College 
Library  will  include  about  eleven  hundred 
titles ;  this  being  just  about  the  size  of  the 
great  collection  of  <•  Petrarch  Books'"  lately 
catalogued  by  its  owner.  Prof.  Willard 
Fiske,  formerly  of  Cornell  University.  The 
whole  body  of  Dantean  literature,  it  is  esti 
mated  by  experts,  must  extend  to  between 
two  and  three  thousand  titles :  and  the  Napo 
leonic  literature  has  been  estimated,  or  rather 
guessed,  at  five  thousand.  The  Barton 
Shakespearean  collection  in  the  Boston  Public 
Library  includes  about  a  thousand  titles  under 


186    THE    NEW    WORLD    AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

the  "  works  "  of  Shakespeare,  and  fifteen  hun 
dred  more  under  "  Shakespeareana."  It  is  cer 
tain  that  all  these  special  collections  are  very 
incomplete,  and  it  is  altogether  probable  that  all 
these  estimates  are  too  scanty.  If  they  are  not, 
they  soon  will  be,  since  all  these  special  litera 
tures  are  increasing  all  the  time.  More  than  a 
hundred  titles  have  been  added  to  the  Dante 
list,  for  instance,  during  the  past  year ;  and 
the  Petrarch  quinquecentennial  called  forth 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  new  works  about 
that  poet  in  Italy  alone.  If  anything  is  cer 
tain,  it  is  that,  when  the  world  has  once  defi 
nitely  accepted  a  man  as  among  the  elect,  his 
fame  and  his  lead  over  his  contemporaries  go 
on  increasing  with  the  passing  years.  It  is 
possible  that  the  AcadSmie  Frangaise  may  yet 
be  chiefly  remembered  because  it  rejected 
Moliere,  as  the  mighty  Persian  conqueror  had  a 
place  in  fame  simply  as  one  who  knew  not  the 
worth  of  Firdousi. 

"  Literature,"  it  has  been  said,  is  "attar  of 
roses :  one  distilled  drop  from  a  million  petals." 
Those  who  learned  their  Italian  nearly  half  a 
century  ago  will  remember  that  the  favorite 


CONCERNING   GIANTS  187 

text-book  was  named,  uThe  Four  Poets''  (/ 
Quattro  Poeti).  But  Ariosto  and  Tasso  are 
now  practically  dropped  out  of  the  running; 
and  those  who  still  read  Petrarch  are  expected 
to  treat  rather  deferentially  those  for  whom 
Italian  literature  means  Dante  only.  Yet 
Voltaire  wrote  of  Dante,  only  a  century  and  a 
half  ago,  that  although  occasionally,  under 
favorable  circumstances,  he  wrote  lines  not  un 
worthy  of  Tasso  or  Ariosto,  yet  his  work  was,  as 
a  whole,  "  stupidly  extravagant  and  barbarous." 
"The  Italians,"  he  says,  "call  him  divine,  but 
it  is  a  hidden  divinity ;  few  people  understand 
his  oracles.  He  has  commentators,  which  is 
perhaps  another  reason  for  his  not  being  under 
stood.  His  reputation  will  go  on  increasing, 
because  scarce  anybody  reads  him."  How  little 
he  was  known  in  England  a  hundred  years  ago 
may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  Dr.  Nathan 
Drake,  who  had  quite  a  name  as  a  critic  a  cen 
tury  ago,  spoke  of  Dr.  Darwin's  placid  and 
pedantic  poem,  "  The  Botanic  Garden,"  as 
showing  "the  wild  and  terrible  sublimity  of 
Dante."  A  hundred  years  from  this  have  ended 
in  Ruskin's  characterization  of  Dante  as  "  the 


188   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND    THE   NEW  BOOK 

central  man  of  all  the  world,  as  representing  in 
perfect  balance  the  imaginative,  moral,  and 
intellectual  faculties,  all  at  their  highest." 
When  we  consider  that  this  was  said  of  a  man 
born  more  than  six  centuries  before  the  words 
were  written,  it  certainly  illustrates  the  con 
centration  of  fame  upon  a  single  name.  With 
scarcely  less  superb  exclusiveness,  Goethe 
described  Napoleon  as  "  a  compendium  of  the 
world  "  (^Dieses  Compendium  der  Welt). 

In  allusion  to  such  instances  as  these,  Goethe 
expressed  to  Eckermann  the  conviction  that  the 
higher  powers  had  pleased  themselves  by  pla 
cing  among  men  certain  detached  figures,  so 
alluring  as  to  set  everybody  striving  after 
them,  yet  so  great  as  to  be  beyond  all  reach 
(I)ie  so  anlockend  sind,  das  jeder  nach  ihnen 
strebt,  und  so  gross  das  niemand  sie  erreicht). 
"Mozart,"  he  said,  "represents  the  unattain 
able  in  music,  and  Shakespeare  in  poetry." 
He  instanced  also  Raphael  and  Napoleon ;  and 
the  loyal  Eckermann  inwardly  added  the 
speaker  himself  to  the  list.  "  I  refer  "  Goethe 
said  "  to  the  natural  dowry,  the  inborn  wealth  " 
(Das  Naturell,  das  grosse  Angeborene  der 


CONCERNING   GIANTS  189 

Natur).  It  will  be  a  theme  for  never-ending 
discussion  how  far  this  concentration  is  really 
due  to  the  exceptional  greatness  of  the  subject, 
and  how  far  to  the  tendency  of  genius  to  draw 
to  itself  all  the  floating  materials  of  the  time, 
to  drain  its  best  intellects,  to  reflect  its  best 
impulses.  Dante,  of  all  great  writers,  is  the 
least  explainable  in  this  way ;  but  in  the  case 
of  Shakespeare,  of  Voltaire,  of  Goethe,  it  is 
obvious  enough.  The  last  named  was  always 
ready  to  admit  his  own  obligations,  not  merely 
to  his  own  fellow-countrymen,  as  Schiller,  but 
to  Englishmen  and  Frenchmen  ;  and  was  pro 
foundly  moved  on  receiving  the  first  French 
version  of  his  "  Faust,"  from  the  thought  of  the 
profound  influence  exercised  by  Voltaire  and  his 
great  contemporaries  over  him  as  over  the  whole 
civilized  world.  Humbler  men  are  constantly 
obliged  to  recognize  how  they  themselves  have 
been  fed  and  nourished  by  those  lowlier  still ; 
and  we  may  be  very  sure  that  the  greatest  are 
formed  in  the  same  way,  and  draw  from  many 
obscure  and  even  inexplicable  sources,  as  Heine 
claims  that  he  learned  all  the  history  of  the 
French  Revolution  through  the  drumming  of 
an  old  French  drummer. 


190   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

It  is  obvious  enough  that  the  relative  propor 
tions  of  printed  matter  do  not  precisely  reflect 
absolute  merit,  because  they  are  liable  to  be 
influenced  by  trivial  considerations,  apart  from 
personal  qualities.  The  Man  in  the  Iron  Mask 
was  not  necessarily  a  great  man  because  he 
occasioned  an  extensive  literature ;  and  Junius 
fills  the  library  as  an  inexhaustible  conundrum, 
whereas  plain  Sir  Philip  Francis  might  never 
have  elicited  even  a  biography.  Had  Shelley 
been  the  contented  husband  of  one  wife,  or  had 
Poe  selected  any  one  city  to  dwell  in  and  dwelt 
there,  it  is  certain  that  the  Shelley  literature 
and  the  Poe  literature  would  have  been  far 
slenderer  in  dimensions,  though  the  genius  of 
the  poets  might  have  remained  the  same.  It  is 
the  personal  qualities,  in  such  cases,  that  multi 
ply  the  publications,  though  it  is  quite  true,  on 
the  other  side,  that  Poe  might  have  lived  un 
noticed  in  more  cities  than  claimed  Homer  had 
it  not  been  for  "  The  Raven,"  and  that  Shelley 
might  have  had  as  many  wives  as  a  Mormon 
but  for  "  The  Skylark."  As  time  goes  on,  it  is 
the  thought  of  the  poet  more  than  the  gossip 
about  his  life  which  holds  and  creates  literature, 


CONCERNING   GIANTS  191 

and  there  are  always  a  dozen  who  wish  to  un 
lock  the  mystery  of  Hamlet  for  one  who 
demands  positive  evidence  as  to  Shakespeare's 
wedded  bliss.  But,  however  we  explain  it, 
there  is  such  a  tendency  of  study  and  criticism 
toward  concentration  on  single  figures,  that  no 
nation  in  the  course  of  centuries  can  furnish 
more  than  two  or  three ;  and  it  is  ,  much  for 
any  people  if  it  can  furnish  one.  The  growing 
proportions  of  the  Emerson  literature  leave 
little  doubt  who  is  to  provide  for  America  —  if, 
indeed,  any  one  is  to  supply  it  —  that  central 
and  controlling  figure. 


192   THE   NEW    WOKLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

XXIII 
WEAPONS   OF   PRECISION 

TTTHEN  in  July,  1609,  the  Iroquois  Indians 
first  saw  a  gun  fired,  and  saw  two  men 
fall  dead  at  a  distance,  because  the  Sieur  de 
Champlain  had  raised  something  to  his  cheek, 
they  were  so  utterly  frightened  that  the  whole 
tribe  ran  away,  abandoning  their  camp  and 
their  provisions.  Yet  the  gun  was  only  a 
short  weapon,  then  called  an  arquebus,  and 
loaded  with  four  balls.  It  did  not  take  long 
for  these  very  Indians  to  learn  the  use  of  the 
arquebus ;  and  yet,  if  one  of  them  were  to  come 
to  life  again  and  look  at  a  modern  rifle,  it 
would  cause  him  as  much  amazement  as  if  he 
had  never  seen  a  firearm.  These  delicate 
grooves  and  spiral  curves  would  strike  him  as 
a  piece  of  mere  affectation ;  and  he  would  pre 
fer  by  all  means  an  honest  old-fashioned  affair 
that  would  send  a  bullet  straight  to  its  mark. 
He  would  not  be  convinced  until  he  again  saw 
a  man  fall  dead,  and  this  time  at  an  incredible 
distance,  by  an  invisible  blow. 


WEAPONS   OF   PRECISION  193 

Now,  style  in  writing  is  a  weapon  far  more 
delicate  and  more  formidable  than  the  latest 
form  of  needle-gun.  It  will  not  merely  kill 
a  man's  body  at  the  range  of  a  thousand  yards, 
but  his  reputation  at  a  distance  of  centuries. 
Nay,  it  will  not  only  kill,  but  it  will  keep 
alive,  which  may  be  worse;  keep  the  stained 
memory  in  existence  beyond  the  possibility  of  a 
happy  oblivion — and  so  also  with  memories  of 
good.  So  long  as  it  remains  crude  and  unde 
veloped,  language  has  not  acquired  this  capa 
bility;  but  every  added  refinement  of  touch, 
every  improved  note  of  precision,  will  expand 
and  perfect  this  carrying  power.  The  blunt 
repartee  of  the  mining-camp  may  furnish  as 
good  a  prelude  as  any  other  for  drawing  a 
revolver  from  the  hip  pocket-;  but  the  effect  of 
the  saying  dies  with  the  duel  and  the  funeral. 
It  takes  the  fine  rapier  of  Talleyrand's  wit  to 
impale  an  opponent  for  a  hundred  years  upon  a 
single  delicate  phrase,  intervening  between  the 
smile  and  the  snuff-box. 

The  French  language  has  doubtless  a  peculiar 
capacity  in  this  direction,  sharpened  by  the 
steady  practice  of  generations;  but  the  English 


194   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

language  comes  next  to  it,  could  we  only  out 
grow  the  impression  that  there  is  no  honesty  in 
anything  but  a  knock-down  blow,  and  that  all 
finer  touches  are  significant  of  sin ;  that  boxing 
is  a  manly  exercise,  in  short,  while  fencing  is 
not.  It  is  a  curious  fact,  however,  that  as  the 
best  American  manners  incline  to  the  French 
and  not  the  English  model,  so  the  tendency  of 
American  literary  style  is  to  the  finer  methods, 
quicker  repartees,  and  more  delicate  turns. 
People  complain,  and  with  some  justice,  jof  a  cer 
tain  thinness  in  the  material  of  Mr.  Howells's 
conversations ;  but  his  phrases  are  not  so  thin 
as  the  edge  of  a  Damascus  blade,  and  where  the 
life  itself  is  to  be  reached,  this  keenness  has  a 
certain  advantage.  We  are  constantly  told  by 
English  critics  that  in  real  life  people  do  not 
talk  in  this  way,  to  which  the  answer  is,  that 
the  scene  of  his  novels  is  not  laid  in  England. 

Lightness  of  touch  is  the  final  test  of  power. 
Oil  il  rCy  a  point  de  delicatesse,  il  n*y  a  point  de 
literature.  Joubert  goes  on  to  add  that  where 
there  is  shown  in  literary  style  only  the  attri 
bute  of  strength,  the  style  expresses  character 
alone,  not  training.  There  has  come  lately  a 


WEAPONS   OP   PRECISION  195 

certain  slovenliness  into  the  vocabulary  of 
Englishmen  which  is  a  sign  of  weakness,  not 
of  strength.  It  may  be  meant  for  strength, 
but,  like  swearing,  it  is  rather  a  substitute  for 
it.  When  Matthew  Arnold,  at  the  outset  of 
his  paper  on  Emerson,  proposes  that  we  should 
"pull  ourselves  together''  to  examine  him,  he 
says  crudely  what  might  have  been  more  forci 
bly  conveyed  by  a  finer  touch.  When  Mr. 
Gosse,  in  one  of  his  Forum  papers,  answers  an 
objection  with  "A  fiddlestick's  end  for  suclj  a 
theory!  "  it  does  not  give  an  impression  of 
vigor,  or  of  what  he  calls,  in  case  of  Dryden, 
"a  virile  tramp,"  but  rather  suggests  that 
humbler  hero  of  whom  Byron  records  that  — 

"  He  knew  not  what  to  say,  and  so  he  swore." 

The  fact  that  Mr.  Arnold  and  Mr.  Gosse  have 
both  made  good  criticisms  on  others  does  not 
necessarily  indicate  that  they  practise  as  they 
preach.  To  come  back  once  more  to  the  incom 
parable  Joubert,  we  often  find  a  good  ear  per 
fectly  compatible  with  a  false  note.  Que  de 
gens,  en  litterature,  ont  Voreille  juste,  et  chantent 
faux  ! 


196   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND    THE   NEW    BOOK 

It  is  never  worth  while  to  dwell  much  upon 
international  comparisons ;  it  is  enough  to  say 
that  the  oft-criticised  want  of  the  art-instinct  in 
English-speaking  nations  shows  itself,  'though 
in  a  less  degree,  in  literature  also,  and  renders 
constant  watchfulness  needful  lest  we  revert 
into  brutality.  In  this  respect  modern  Ger 
many  can  teach  us  little,  save  through  the 
Franco-German  Heine.  A  young  American 
usually  comes  home  from  a  German  university 
with  more  knowledge  than  when  he  went 
there,  but  with  less  power  of  felicitous  expres 
sion.  But  Greece  and  Rome  have  still  unex 
hausted  lessons,  and  so  have  Persia  and  Arabia ; 
these  last,  indeed,  wreathe  their  weapons  with 
too  many  roses,  but  they  carry  true  neverthe 
less.  Dante  not  only  created  his  own  concep 
tions,  but  almost  the  very  language  in  which 
he  wrote ;  and  what  was  his  power  of  expres 
sion  we  can  judge  best  by  seeing  in  how  few 
lines  he  can  put  vividly  before  us  some  theme 
which  Tennyson  or  Browning  afterward  ham 
mers  out  into  a  long  poem.  In  English  litera 
ture  there  seemed  to  be  developing,  in  the  time 
of  Addison,  something  of  that  steady,  even, 


WEAPONS   OF    PRECISION  197 

felicitous  power  which  makes  French  prose  so 
remarkable;  but  it  has  passed,  since  his  day, 
possibly  from  excess  of  vigor,  into  a  prolonged 
series  of  experiments.  Johnson  experimental 
ized  in  one  direction,  Coleridge  in  another; 
Landor,  Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Ruskin.  in  other 
directions  still ;  and  the  net  result  is  an  uncer 
tain  type  of  style,  which  has  almost  always 
vigor  and  sometimes  beauty,  but  is  liable  at 
any  moment  to  relapse  into  Rider  Haggard  and 
"a  fiddlestick's  end."  It  is  hard  for  our 
modest  American  speech  to  hold  its  own,  now 
that  the  potent  influence  of  Emerson  has  passed 
away ;  but  we  are  lost  unless  we  keep  resolutely 
in  mind  that  prose  style  ought  not  to  be  merely 
a  bludgeon  or  a  boomerang,  but  should  be  a 
weapon  of  precision. 


198   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

XXIV 
THE    TEST    OF    THE    DIME    NOVEL 

~"VTO  work  of  fiction  ever  published  in  Lon 
don,  the  newspapers  say,  received  so  many 
advance  orders  as  greeted  a  late  story  by  Mr. 
Haggard.  It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the 
difference  between  the  current  literary  tenden 
cies  of  England  and  America,  that  in  the 
mother-country  alone  are  authors  of  this  type 
taken  seriously.  The  sale  of  their  works  is 
often  larger  here  than  in  England,  for  the  same 
reason  which  makes  the  combined  circulation 
of  daily  newspapers  so  much  larger;  but  they 
are  no  more  considered  as  forming  a  part  of 
literature  than  one  would  include  in  a  "His 
tory  of  the  Drama "  some  sworn  statement  as 
to  the  number  of  tickets  sold  for  a  Christmas 
pantomime.  When  a  certain  Mr.  Mansfield 
Tracy  Walworth  was  murdered  near  New  York, 
a  few  years  ago,  it  came  out  incidentally  that 
he  had  written  a  novel  called  "Warwick, "of 
which  seventy-five  thousand  copies  had  been 


THE   TEST    OF   THE    DIME   NOVEL          199 

sold,  and  another  called  "  Delaplaine, "  that 
had  gone  up  to  forty-five  thousand.  Another 
author  of  the  same  school,  known  as  "Ned 
Buntline,"  is  said  to  have  earned  sixty  thou 
sand  dollars  in  a  single  year  by  his  efforts; 
and  still  another,  Sylvanus  Cobb,  Jr.,  is  known 
to  have  habitually  received  a  salary  of  ten 
thousand  dollars  for  publications  equally  pop 
ular.  No  community  can  do  without  such 
books,  but  in  America  they  are  not  usually 
counted  as  literature.  Their  authors  scarcely 
obtain  even  the  cheap  immortality  of  the  ency 
clopaedia.  Such  books  are  innocent  enough; 
they  are  simply  harmless  weeds  that  grow  up 
wherever  the  soil  is  rich,  and  sometimes  where 
it  is  barren ;  science  must  catalogue  them  im 
partially,  but  they  are  not  reckoned  as  a  part  of 
the  horticultural  product.  The  peculiarity  is, 
that  in  England  Mr.  Haggard's  crop  of  weeds 
is  counted  into  the  harvest;  his  preposterous 
plots  are  gravely  discussed,  compared,  and 
criticised;  he  is  himself  admitted  into  the 
Contemporary  Review  as  a  valued  contributor; 
Mr.  Lang  writes  books  with  him;  his  success 
lies  not  merely  in  his  publisher's  balance,  like 


200   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW  BOOK 

that   of   Mr.  Wai  worth,   Mr.    Cobb,    or   "Ned 
Runtime,"  but  it  is  a  succes  d'estime. 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  one  opens  an 
American  daily  paper  to  see  what  is  said  about 
the  latest  Haggard  publication,  one  is  likely  to 
happen  upon  something  like  this :  "  We  grudge 
it  the  few  necessary  lines  .  .  .  The  illustra 
tions  are  worthy  of  what  they  illustrate,  and  a 
second-rate  imagination  runs  riot  in  pictures 
and  text."  Even  this,  perhaps,  is  giving  too 
much  space  to  the  matter ;  but  even  if  a  London 
critic  wished  to  say  just  this,  he  would  say  it 
on  such  a  scale  as  if  he  were  discussing  a  post 
humous  work  by  George  Eliot.  This  differ 
ence  is  the  more  to  be  noticed  because  there 
was  surely  a  time  when  the  externals  of  good 
writing,  at  least,  were  held  in  high  esteem  at 
London;  and  the  critics  of  that  metropolis 
were  wont  to  give  but  short  shrift  to  any  book 
which  disregarded  those  conditions.  But  that 
which  practically  excludes  Mr.  Haggard  from 
the  ranks  of  serious  and  accredited  writers  is 
not  that  his  sentiment  is  melodramatic,  his 
fancy  vulgar,  and  his  situations  absurd;  the 
more  elementary  ground  of  exclusion  is  that  he 


THE   TEST   OF   THE   DIME   NOVEL          201 

makes  fritters  of  English.  It  is  hard  for  criti 
cism  to  deal  seriously  with  a  novelist  who 
writes :  "  It  is  us ; "  "  He  .  .  .  read  on  like 
some  one  reads  in  some  ghastly  dream;" 
"Jacobus  .  .  .  whom  was  exceedingly  sick;" 
"So  that  was  wrhere  they  were  being  taken  to;  " 
and  the  like.  In  the  Contemporary  Review 
his  style  seems  to  have  been  revised  editori 
ally,  and  we  find  nothing  worse  than  such 
slang  phrases  as  "played  out,"  though  this  is 
certainly  bad  enough.  If  a  man  in  decent 
society  should  place  his  feet  upon  the  table 
but  once,  his  standing  would  be  as  effectually 
determined  as  if  his  offences  had  been  seventy 
times  seven. 

Now,  whatever  may  be  said  of  current 
tendencies  in  American  literature,  it  may  at 
least  be  claimed  that  our  leading  novelists  do 
not  tilt  back  their  chairs  or  put  their  feet  upon 
the  table.  Mr.  Howells,  for  instance,  has  his 
defects,  and  may  be  proceeding,  just  now,  upon 
a  theory  too  narrow;  but  it  is  impossible  to 
deny  that  he  recognizes  the  minor  morals  of 
literary  art.  His  sentences  hold  well  together; 
he  does  not  gush,  does  not  straggle,  gives  no 


202   THE   NEW   WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

passages  of  mere  twaddle.  He  does  not,  like 
William  Black,  catch  the  same  salmon  over 
again  so  many  times  in  a  single  story,  and  with 
such  ever-increasing  fulness  of  detail,  that 
Izaak  Walton  himself  would  at  last  be  bored 
into  an  impulse  of  forbearance;  he  does  not, 
like  Clark  Russell,  keep  his  heroine  for  nearly 
a  year  running  about  half-clothed  over  scorch 
ing  rocks  upon  a  tropical  island,  and  then  go 
into  raptures  over  the  dazzling  whiteness  of  her 
bosom.  So  in  the  use  of  language,  Howells 
does  not,  like  Hardy,  write  "tactical  observa 
tion"  where  he  means  "tactful;"  or,  like 
Haggard,  s&y  "those  sort  of  reflections."  It  is 
a  curious  thing  that  on  the  very  points  where 
America  formerly  went  to  school  to  England, 
we  should  now  have  to  praise  our  own  authors 
for  setting  a  decent  example. 

Can  it  be  that,  as  time  goes  on,  the  habit  of 
careful  writing  is  one  day  to  be  set  aside  care 
lessly,  as  a  mere  American  whim?  In  Profes 
sor  Bain's  essay  "  On  Teaching  English,  with 
Detailed  Examples"  one  finds  such  phrases 
on  the  part  of  the  author  as  "  Sixty  themes  or 
thereby  are  handled  in  these  pages "  (p.  38), 


THE   TEST   OF   THE   DIME   NOVEL  203 

and  "The  whole  of  the  instruction  in  higher 
English  might  be  overtaken  in  such  a  course  " 
(p.  48);  the  italics  being  my  own.  If  such  are 
the  "detailed  examples  "  given  by  professional 
teachers  in  England,  what  is  to  become  of  the 
followers?  It  is  encouraging,  perhaps,  to  see 
that  the  prolonged  American  resistance  to  the 
Anglicism  "different  to"  may  be  having  a 
little  reflex  influence,  when  the  Spectator 
describes  Tennyson's  second  "Locksley  Hall" 
as  being  "different  from"  his  first.  The 
influence  is  less  favorable  when  we  find  one  of 
the  most  local  and  illiterate  of  American  collo 
quialisms  reappearing  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
where  it  says :  "  Even  Mr.  Sala  is  better  known, 
we  expect,  for  his  half-dozen  books,"  etc.  But 
the  most  repellent  things  one  sees  in  English 
books,  in  the  way  of  language,  are  the  coarse 
nesses  for  which  no  American  is  responsible, 
as  when  in  the  graceful  writings  of  Juliana 
Ewing  the  reader  comes  upon  the  words 
"stinking"  or  "nigger."  This  last  offensive 
word  is  also  invariably  used  by  Froude  in 
"Oceana."  Granting  that  taste  and  decorum 
are  less  important  than  logic  and  precision,  it 


204  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

seems  as  if  even  these  last  qualities  must  have 
become  a  little  impaired  when  we  read  in  the 
Saturday  Review  such  curious  lapses  as  this: 
"At  home  we  have  only  the  infinitely  little, 
the  speeches  of  infinitesimal  members  of  Parlia 
ment.  ...  In  America  matters  yet  more 
minute  occupy  the  press."  More  minute  than 
the  infinitely  little  and  the  infinitesimal! 

It  will  be  a  matter  of  deep  regret  to  all 
thoughtful  Americans  should  there  ever  be  a 
distinct  lowering  of  the  standard  of  literary 
workmanship  in  England.  The  different 
branches  of  the  English-speaking  race  are 
mutually  dependent;  they  read  each  other's 
books ;  they  need  to  co-operate  in  keeping  up 
the  common  standard.  It  is  too  much  to  ask 
of  any  single  nation  that  it  should  do  this 
alone.  Can  it  be  that  the  real  source  of  the 
change,  if  it  is  actually  in  progress,  may  be 
social  rather  than  literary?  It  is  conceivable 
that  the  higher  status  of  the  dime  novel  in 
England  may  be  simply  a  part  of  that  reversion 
toward  a  lower  standard  which  grows  naturally 
out  of  an  essentially  artificial  social  structure. 
Is  it  possible  that  some  strange  and  abnormal 


THE   TEST   OF    THE   DIME   NOVEL  205 

results  should  not  follow  where  one  man  is 
raised  to  the  peerage  because  he  is  a  successful 
brewer,  and  another  because  he  is  Alfred  Ten 
nyson  ?  No  dozen  poets  or  statesmen,  it  is  said, 
would  have  been  so  mourned  in  England  as  was 
Archer  the  jockey ;  nor  did  Holmes  or  Lowell 
have  a  London  success  so  overpowering  as  that 
of  "Buffalo  Bill."  In  a  community  which 
thus  selects  its  heroes,  why  should  not  the 
highest  of  all  wreaths  of  triumph  be  given  to 
Mr.  Haggard's  Umslopagaas,  "that  dreadful- 
looking,  splendid  savage  "? 


206   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 


XXV 

THE   TRICK   OF    SELF-DEPRECIATION 

PT1HE  two  great  branches  of  the  English- 
speaking  race  have  this  in  common,  that 
they  criticise  themselves  very  frankly,  in  a  way 
one  rarely  finds  among  Germans  or  Frenchmen. 
It  comes,  perhaps,  from  the  habit  of  local  self- 
government.  If  the  streets  are  not  well  lighted, 
or  if  one's  horse  stumbles  over  an  ill-kept  pave 
ment,  the  natural  impulse  is  to  complain  of  it 
to  every  one  we  meet,  and  to  write  about  it  in 
the  local  newspaper.  Instead  of  putting  only 
our  strong  points  forward,  we  are  always  ready 
to  discuss  our  weakest  side.  This  must  always 
be  remembered  in  digesting  the  criticisms  of 
Englishmen.  Dickens,  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Arnold, 
have  said  nothing  about  Americans  more  un 
pleasant  than  they  had  previously  said  about 
their  own  countrymen ;  and  why  should  we 
expect  to  fare  any  better  ?  It  is  only  in  foreign 
countries  that  even  we  Americans  stand  up 


THE  TRICK   OF   SELF-DEPRECIATION      207 

resolutely  for  our  own  land.  I  lived  for  some 
time  with  a  returned  fellow-countryman  of  very 
keen  wit,  who,  after  long  residence  in  Europe, 
found  nothing  to  please  him  at  home.  One 
day,  meeting  one  of  his  European  companions, 

I  was  asked,  "  How  is ?     Does  he  stand  up 

for  everything  American,  through  thick  and 
thin,  as  he  used  to  do  in  Florence  ?  "  Turn 
ing  upon  my  neighbor  with  this  unexpected 
supply  of  ammunition,  I  was  met  with  the 
utmost  frankness.  He  owned  that  while  in 
Europe  he  had  defended  all  American  ways, 
through  loyalty,  and  that  he  criticised  them  at 
home  for  the  same  reason.  "  I  shall  abuse  my 
own  country,"  he  said,  "so  long  as  I  think  it 
is  worth  saving.  When  that  hope  is  gone,  I 
shall  praise  it." 

In  the  once  famous  poem  of  "  Festus,"  re 
called  lately  to  memory  by  its  fiftieth  anniver 
sary,  there  is  a  fine  passage  about  the  useless- 
ness  of  indiscriminate  censure  :  — 

"  The  worst  way  to  improve  the  world 
Is  to  condemn  it.  Men  may  overget 
Delusion,  not  despair." 

For  example,  I  cannot  help  admiring  the  patient 


208   THE   NEW  WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

fidelity  with  which  my  old  friend  Professor 
Norton  holds  up  everything  among  us  to  an 
ideal  standard,  and  censures  what  he  thinks 
the  vanity  of  our  nation.  But  those  who 
think  with  me  that  behind  that  apparent  vanity 
there  is  a  real  self-distrust,  which  is  a  greater 
evil,  —  those  who  think  that  timidity,  not  con 
ceit,  is  our  real  national  foible,  —  can  easily  see 
how  these  very  criticisms  foster  that  timidity ; 
so  that  "  meek  young  men  grow  up  in  libraries," 
in  Emerson's  phrase,  who  feel  that  what  they 
can  say  can  claim  no  weight  in  either  conti 
nent,  so  long  as  they  do  not  say  it  in  the  Satur 
day  Review.  So  some  rather  impulsive  remarks 
in  a  New  York  newspaper  as  to  the  large 
number  of  persons  in  this  country,  as  in  all 
countries,  who  assume  a  clean  shirt  but  once 
a  week,  probably  did  little  or  no  good  to  the 
offending  individuals,  while  it  has  winged  a 
fatal  arrow  for  Matthew  Arnold's  bow,  as  for 
many  others.  Comparisons  are  often  mislead 
ing.  David  Urquhart.  the  English  traveller, 
was  always  denouncing  his  fellow-countrymen 
as  exceedingly  dirty  when  compared  with  the 
Mohammedan  races,  and  used  to  wish  that 


THE  TRICK   OF   SELF-DEPRECIATION      209 

Charles  Martel  had  not  finally  driven  back  the 
Saracen  forces  at  the  battle  of  Tours,  because 
if  he  had  been  defeated,  Urquhart  says,  the 
Mohammedans  would  have  overrun  all  Europe, 
"  and  then  even  we  English  should  have  been 
gentlemen." 

Of  all  the  points  on  which  we  Americans 
are  apt  to  satirize  ourselves,  the  much-discussed 
American  girl  is  the  most  available.  There  is 
not  in  this  wide  land  a  journalist  so  callow  as 
not  to  be  able,  when  news  runs  short,  to  turn 
a  paragraph  on  this  theme,  with  some  epigram 
as  sparkling  as  his  brains  and  as  comprehen 
sive  as  his  experience.  Thus,  opening  a  West 
ern  magazine,  one  comes  upon  the  amazing 
statement  that  the  New  York  girl  "  dines 
heavily,  drinks  wine  at  all  meals,  smokes  cigar 
ettes,  and  revels  at  all  times  in  the  effects  of 
the  most  advanced  usages,"  -  whatever  this 
last  vague  and  awful  intimation  may  mean. 
On  the  next  page  the  same  author  assures  us, 
with  equally  close  and  unerring  knowledge, 
that  "the  Southern  girl  is  the  most  truly 
learned  of  her  sex ;  .  .  .  she  is  seldom  other 
wise  than  beautiful  :  .  .  .  she  plays  all  classi- 


210   THE   NEW    WOULD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

cal  music  without  notes."  Why  are  we  so 
severe  on  poor  stray  Englishmen,  who  know  no 
better,  when  we  ourselves  furnish  such  social 
observation  as  this  ?  Yet  this  kind  of  thing 
may  be  read  far  and  wide  under  the  head  of 
"Society  Chit-chat,"  and  is  apt  to  leave  the 
impression  that  the  writer  was  about  as  near 
to  the  wondrous  creatures  he  describes  as  that 
coachman  mentioned  by  Horace  Walpole,  who, 
having  driven  certain  maids  of  honor  for  many 
years,  left  his  savings  to  his  son  on  condition 
that  this  chosen  heir  should  never  marry  a  maid 
of  honor. 

The  real  test  of  the  manners  and  morals  of  a 
nation  is  not  by  comparison  with  other  nations, 
but  with  itself.  It  must  be  judged  by  the  his 
torical,  not  by  the  topographical,  standard. 
Does  it  develop?  and  how?  Manners,  like 
morals,  are  an  affair  of  evolution,  and  must 
often  be  a  native  product,  —  a  wholly  indige 
nous  thing.  This  is  the  case,  for  instance,  with 
the  habitual  American  courtesy  to  women  in 
travelling,  — a  thing  unparalleled  in  any  Euro 
pean  country,  and  of  which,  even  in  this  coun 
try,  Howells  finds  his  best  type  in  the  Cali- 


THE   TRICK   OF   SELF-DEPRECIATION      211 

fornian.  What  comes  nearest  to  it  among  the 
Latin  races  is  the  courtesy  of  the  high-bred 
gentleman  toward  the  lady  who  is  his  social 
equal,  which  is  a  wholly  different  thing.  A 
similar  point  of  evolution  in  this  country  is  the 
decorum  of  a  public  assembly.  It  is  known 
that  at  the  early  town  meetings  in  New  Eng 
land  men  sat  with  their  hats  on,  as  in  England. 
Unconsciously,  by  a  simple  evolution  of  good 
manners,  the  practice  has  been  outgrown  in 
America ;  but  Parliament  still  retains  it.  Many 
good  results  may  have  followed  imperceptibly 
from  this  same  habit  of  decorum.  Thus  Mr. 
Bryce  points  out  that  the  forcible  interruption 
of  a  public  meeting  by  the  opposite  party, 
although  very  common  in  England,  is  very  rare 
in  America.  In  general,  with  us,  usages  are 
more  flexible,  more  adaptive ;  in  public  meet 
ings,  for  instance,  we  get  rid  of  a  great  many 
things  that  are  unutterably  tedious,  as  the 
English  practice  of  moving,  seconding,  and 
debating  the  prescribed  vote  of  thanks  to  the 
presiding  officer  at  the  end  of  the  most  insig 
nificant  gathering.  It  is  very  likely  that  even 


212   THE   NEW  WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

our  incessant  self-criticism  contributes  toward 
this  gradual  amelioration  of  habits.  In  that 
case  the  wonder  is,  that  our  English  cousins, 
who  criticise  themselves  quite  as  incessantly, 
should  move  so  slowly. 


THE   LITERARY   PENDULUM  213 

XXVI 
THE   LITERARY   PENDULUM 

A  FTER  all,"  said  the  great  advocate  Rufus 
Choate,  "a  book  is  the  only  immortality." 
That  was  the  lawyer's  point  of  view ;  but  the 
author  knows  that,  even  after  the  book  is  pub 
lished,  the  immortality  is  often  still  to  seek.  In 
the  depressed  moods  of  the  advocate  or  the 
statesman,  he  is  apt  to  imagine  himself  as  writ 
ing  a  book ;  and  when  this  is  done,  it  is  easy 
enough  to  carry  the  imagination  a  step  farther 
and  to  make  the  work  a  magnificent  success ; 
just  as,  if  you  choose  to  fancy  yourself  a  for 
eigner,  it  is  as  easy  to  be  a  duke  as  a  tinker. 
But  the  professional  author  is  more  often  like 
Christopher  Sly,  whose  dukedom  is  in  dreams ; 
and  he  is  fortunate  if  he  does  not  say  of  his 
own  career  with  Christopher :  "  A  very  excel 
lent  piece  of  work,  good  madam  lady.  Would 
'twere  done  ! " 

In  our  college  days  we  are  told  that  men 
change,  while  books  remain  unchanged.  But  in 


214   THE   NEW  WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

a  very  few  years  we  find  that  the  circle  of  books 
alters  as  swiftly  and  strangely  as  that  of  the 
men  who  write  or  the  boys  who  read  them. 
When  the  late  Dr.  Walter  Charming  of  Boston 
was  revisiting  in  old  age  his  birthplace,  New 
port,  R.I.,  he  requested  me  to  take  him  to  the 
Redwood  Library,  of  which  he  had  been  libra 
rian  some  sixty  years  before.  He  presently 
asked  the  librarian,  with  an  eagerness  at  first 
inexplicable,  for  a  certain  book,  whose  name  I 
had  never  before  heard.  With  some  difficulty 
the  custodian  hunted  it  up,  entombed  beneath 
other  dingy  folios  in  a  dusty  cupboard.  Nobody, 
he  said,  had  ever  before  asked  for  it  during  his  ad 
ministration.  "  Strange  !  "  said  Dr.  Channing, 
turning  over  the  leaves.  "  This  was  in  my  time 
the  show-book  of  the  collection ;  people  came 
here  purposely  to  see  it."  He  closed  it  with  a 
sigh,  and  it  was  replaced  in  its  crypt.  Dr. 
Channing  is  dead,  the  librarian  who  unearthed 
the  book  is  since  dead,  and  I  have  forgotten  its 
very  title.  In  all  coming  time,  probably,  its 
repose  will  be  as  undisturbed  as  that  of  Hans 
Andersen's  forgotten  Christmas-tree  in  the  gar 
ret.  Did,  then,  the  authorship  of  that  book  give 


THE    LITERARY    PENDULUM  215 

to   its    author   so    very  substantial   a   hold   on 
immortality  ? 

But  there  is  in  literary  fame  such  a  thing  as 
recurrence  —  a  swing  of  the  pendulum  which 
at  first  brings  despair  to  the  young  author,  yet 
yields  him  at  last  his  only  consolation.  ISeter- 
nite  est  une  pendule,  wrote  Jacques  Bridaine, 
that  else  forgotten  Frenchman  whose  phrase 
gave  Longfellow  the  hint  of  his  "  Old  Clock 
on  the  Stair."  When  our  professors  informed 
us  that  books  remained  unchanged,  those  of  us 
who  were  studious  at  once  pinched  ourselves  to 
buy  books  ;  but  the  authors  for  whom  we  made 
economies  in  our  wardrobe  are  now  as  obsolete, 
very  likely,  as  the  garments  that  we  exchanged 
for  them.  No  undergraduate  would  now  take 
off  my  hands  at  half  price,  probably,  the  sets  of 
Landor's  "Imaginary  Conversations"  and  Cole 
ridge's  "  Literary  Remains,"  which  it  once 
seemed  worth  a  month  of  threadbare  elbows  to 
possess.  I  lately  called  the  attention  of  a  young 
philologist  to  a  tolerably  full  set  of  Thomas 
Taylor's  translations,  and  found  that  he  had 
never  heard  of  even  the  name  of  that  servant 
of  obscure  learning.  In  college  we  studied 


216   THE   NEW  WOULD   AND   THE   NEW    BOOK 

Cousin  and  Jouffroy,  and  he  who  remembers 
the  rise  and  fall  of  all  that  ambitious  school  of 
French  eclectics  can  hardly  be  sure  of  the  per 
manence  of  Herbert  Spencer,  the  first  man 
since  their  day  who  has  undertaken  to  explain 
the  whole  universe  of  being.  How  we  used  to 
read  Hazlitt,  whose  very  name  is  so  forgotten 
that  an  accomplished  author  has  lately  duplicated 
the  title  of  his  most  remarkable  book,  "  Liber 
Amoris,"  without  knowing  that  it  had  ever  been 
used!  What  a  charm  Irving  threw  about  the 
literary  career  of  Roscoe ;  but  who  now  recog 
nizes  his  name  ?  Ardent  youths,  eager  to  com 
bine  intellectual  and  worldly  success,  fed  them 
selves  in  those  days  on  "  Pelham  "  and  "  Vivian 
Grey ; "  but  these  works  are  not  now  even  in 
cluded  in  "Courses  of  Reading"  —  that  last 
infirmity  of  noble  fames.  One  may  look  in 
vain  through  the  vast  mausoleum  of  Bartlett's 
u  Dictionary  of  Quotations  "  for  even  that  one 
maxim  of  costume,  which  was  "  Pelham's  "  bid 
for  immortality. 

Literary  fame  is,  then,  by  no  means  a  fixed 
increment,  but  a  series  of  vibrations  of  the  pen 
dulum.  Happy  is  that  author  who  comes  to  be 


THE  LITERARY   PENDULUM  217 

benefited  by  an  actual  return  of  reputation  — 
as  athletes  get  beyond  the  period  of  breathless- 
ness,  and  come  to  their  "second  wind."  Yet 
this  is  constantly  happening.  Emerson,  visit 
ing  Landor  in  1847,  wrote  in  his  diary,  wiHe 
pestered  me  with  Southey  —  but  who  is 
Southey?"  Now,  Southey  had  tasted  fame 
more  promptly  than  his  greater  contemporaries, 
and  liked  the  taste  so  well  that  he  held  his 
own  poems  far  superior  to  those  of  Words 
worth,  and  wrote  of  them.  "  With  Virgil,  with 
Tasso,  witli  Homer,  there  are  fair  grounds  of 
comparison."  Then  followed  a  period  during 
which  the  long  shades  of  oblivion  seemed  to 
have  closed  over  the  author  of  -  Madoc  "  and 
"Kehama."  Behold!  in  1886  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  revising  through  "  the  best  critics v 
Sir  James  Lubbock's  "  Hundred  Best  Books," 
dethrones  Byron,  Shelley,  Coleridge,  Lamb,  and 
Landor ;  omits  them  all,  and  reinstates  the  for 
gotten  Southey  once  more.  Is  this  the  final 
award  of  fate  ?  No :  it  is  simply  the  inevitable 
swing  of  the  pendulum. 

Southey,   it   would   seem,    is    to    have    two 
innings  ;  perhaps  one  day  it  will  yet  be  Hayley's 


218    THE   NEW    WORLD  AND   THE   NEW    BOOK 

turn.  "  Would  it  please  you  very  much,"  asks 
Warrington  of  Pendennis,  "  to  have  been  the 
author  of  Hayley's  verses  ?  "  Yet  Hayley  was, 
in  his  day,  as  Southey  testifies,  "by  popular 
election  the  king  of  the  English  poets ; "  and  he 
was  held  so  important  a  personage  that  he  re 
ceived,  what  probably  no  other  author  ever  has 
won,  a  large  income  for  the  last  twelve  years  of 
his  life  in  return  for  the  prospective  copyright 
of  his  posthumous  memoirs.  Miss  Anna  Seward, 
writing  in  1786,  ranks  him,  with  the  equally 
forgotten  Mason,  as  "  the  two  foremost  poets 
of  the  day ; "  she  calls  Hayley's  poems  "  mag 
nolias,  roses,  and  amaranths,"  and  pronounces 
his  esteem  a  distinction  greater  than  monarchs 
hold  it  in  their  power  to  bestow.  But  prob 
ably  nine  out  of  ten  who  shall  read  these  lines 
will  have  to  consult  a  biographical  dictionary  to 
find  out  who  Hayley  was  ;  while  his  odd  protege, 
William  Blake,  whom  the  fine  ladies  of  the  day 
wondered  at  Hayley  for  patronizing,  is  now  the 
favorite  of  literature  and  art. 

So  strong  has  been  the  recent  swing  of  the 
pendulum  in  favor  of  what  is  called  realism  in 
fiction,  it  is  very  possible  that  if  Hawthorne's 


THE    LITERARY    PENDULUM  219 

"  Twice-told  Tales  "  were  to  appear  for  the  first 
time  to-morrow  they  would  attract  no  more 
attention  than  they  did  fifty  years  ago.  Mr. 
Stockton  has  lately  made  a  similar  suggestion 
as  to  the  stories  of  Edgar  Poe.  Perhaps  this 
gives  half  a  century  as  the  approximate  meas 
ure  of  the  variations  of  fate  —  the  periodicity 
of  the  pendulum.  On  the  other  hand,  Jane 
Austen,  who  would,  fifty  years  ago,  have  been 
regarded  as  an  author  suited  to  desolate  islands 
or  long  and  tedious  illnesses,  has  now  come  to 
be  the  founder  of  a  school,  and  must  look 
down  benignly  from  heaven  to  see  the  brightest 
minds  assiduously  at  work  upon  that  k»  little  bit 
of  ivory,  two  inches  square  "  by  which  she  symbo 
lized  her  novels.  Then  comes  in,  as  an  altera 
tive,  the  strong  Russian  tribe,  claimed  by  real 
ists  as  real,  by  idealists  as  ideal,  and  perhaps 
forcing  the  pendulum  in  a  new  direction. 
Nothing,  surely,  since  Hawthorne's  death,  has 
given  us  so  much  of  the  distinctive  flavor  of 
his  genius  as  TourguenpfFs  extraordinary 
"  Poems  in  Prose  "  in  the  admirable  version  of 
Mrs.  T.  S.  Perry. 

But   the    question,    after   all,    recurs :    why 


220  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

should  we  thus  be  slaves  of  the  pendulum? 
Why  should  we  not  look  at  these  vast  varia 
tions  of  taste  more  widely,  and,  as  it  were, 
astronomically,  to  borrow  Thoreau's  phrase  ? 
In  the  mind  of  a  healthy  child  there  is  no  in 
congruity  between  fairy  tales  and  the  Rollo 
Books ;  and  he  passes  without  disquiet  from  the 
fancied  heart-break  of  a  tin  soldier  to  Jonas 
mending  an  old  rat-trap  in  the  barn.  Perhaps, 
after  all,  the  literary  fluctuation  occurs  equally  in 
their  case  and  in  ours,  but  under  different  con 
ditions.  It  may  be  that,  in  the  greater  mobil 
ity  of  the  child's  nature,  the  pendulum  can 
swing  to  and  fro  in  half  a  second  of  time  and 
without  the  consciousness  of  effort ;  while  in  the 
case  of  older  readers,  the  same  vibration  takes 
half  a  century  of  time  and  the  angry  debate  of 
a  thousand  journals. 


THE  EVOLUTION   OF   AN   AMERICAN       221 

XXVII 
THE   EVOLUTION   OF    AN   AMERICAN 

TpMERSON  once  wrote,  "We  go  to  Europe 
to  be  Americanized."  In  the  recent  Corre 
spondence  of  John  Lothrop  Motley  —  the  most 
attractive  series  of  letters  which  the  present 
writer  has  for  many  a  day  encountered — the 
most  interesting  feature,  after  all,  is  the  gradual 
evolution  of  an  American.  Wendell  Phillips 
used  to  delight  in  testifying  to  the  manner  in 
which  this  process  went  on  in  this  his  classmate 
and  friend,  and  also  in  himself.  Both  came  out 
of  Harvard  College,  Phillips  said,  the  narrow 
aristocrats  of  a  petty  sphere ;  both  —  though 
he  did  not  say  this  —  handsome,  elegant, 
accomplished,  the  prime  favorites  of  the  small 
but  really  polished  circle  of  the  Boston  of  that 
day.  In  case  of  Phillips,  the  emancipation  was 
more  rapid  ;  and  he  too  o\red  it  in  a  sense  to 
Europe,  for  it  was  there  he  met  his  future  wife, 
through  whom  he  first  became  interested  in  the 
anti-slavery  movement.  In  Motley's  case  the 


222   THE  NEW  WORLD  AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

change  came  more  slowly,  and  reached  its  crisis 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War ;  and  it  must 
have  been  at  the  time  of  his  arrival  in  this 
country  in  1861  that  he  met  Phillips  with  the 
ardent  exclamation,  as  the  latter  used  to  repeat 
it,  "  Phillips,  you  were  right,  and  I  was 
wrong !  "  This  may,  however,  have  been  when 
he  visited  home  in  1858,  for  his  dissatisfaction 
with  the  pro-slavery  tendency  of  public  affairs 
was  manifest  as  early  as  1855.1 

I  can  remember  well  my  first  impression  of 
Motley  and  his  friend  and  afterward  brother-in- 
law,  Stackpole,  as  the  acknowledged  leaders  of 
the  Boston  society  of  which  I  had  an  occasional 
boyish  glimpse  ;  and  the  glamour  of  youth  still 
remains  strong  enough  to  make  it  impossible  for 
me  to  believe  that  any  drawing-room  was  ever 
ruled  by  more  elegant  and  distinguished  men. 
There  was  a  younger  brother  —  nearer  my  own 
age  —  Preble  Motley,  who  was  an  athlete  as 
well  as  an  Antinous,  and  hence  doubly  the  idol 
of  his  compeers ;  and  his  early  death  was  caused, 
in  the  traditions  of  that  time,  by  a  too  daring 
excess  in  those  gymnastic  exercises  which  were 

i  Correspondence,  i.  170,  268. 


THE  EVOLUTION   OF   AN   AMERICAN       223 

just  beginning  to  come  into  vogue.  The  elder 
brother  was  of  a  more  delicate  and  poetic 
mould ;  and  it  could  be  said  of  him,  as  is  said 
of  the  prophet  Mohammed  in  the  Sheeah  tradi 
tions,  that  "  his  manners  charmed  all  mankind." 
Hence  he  found  himself  readily  at  home  in  the 
court  society  of  Vienna,  to  which  he  was  first 
sent ;  and  when  he  was  transferred  to  England, 
he  felt  keenly  the  delight  at  finding,  with  a 
shade  less  of  elegance  in  the  society  around  him, 
a  recognition  which  he  had  not  before  encoun 
tered,  of  purely  intellectual  claims.  Hence  we 
find  him  in  the  first  volume  of  his  letters  lavish 
ing  praises  on  London  society,  such  as  he  was 
by  no  means  ready  to  reaffirm  after  the  crucial 
test  of  our  Civil  War  had  been  applied.  In  the 
earlier  days,  too,  he  naturally  contrasted  the 
accumulated  intellectual  wealth  of  Europe  with- 
the  comparative  poverty  of  his  own  land  in 
these  respects.  "  When  I  see  here  in  Europe 
such  sums  of  money  spent  by  the  government 
upon  every  branch  of  the  finr>  arts,  I  cannot  help 
asking  why  we  at  home  have  no  picture-galleries, 
or  statue-galleries,  or  libraries.  I  cannot  see  at 
all  that  such  things  are  only  fit  for  monarchies."  1 

1  Correspondence  i.  29. 


224   THE   NEW  WORLD   AND    THE   NEW   BOOK 

This  was  in  his  student  days  in  1833  ;  and  it 
would  now  seem  less  appropriate  were  it  not 
that  our  barbarous  tariff  on  works  of  art  is  still 
continued ;  and  a  later  complaint,  in  1851,  that 
our  American  rivers  are  "deaf  and  dumb"  for 
want  of  literary  associations  1  is  rapidly  growing 
obsolete. 

The  habitual  and  still  lingering  indifference 
of  Europeans  to  all  matters  in  the  New  World 
had  already  struck  Motley  in  1852,  at  the  time 
of  Daniel  Webster's  death,  when  he  found 
scarcely  any  one  on  the  European  continent  who 
had  ever  heard  his  name,  although  one  literary 
lady  had  an  impression  that  he  was  one  of  our 
principal  poets.  Nobody  in  England  supposed 
that  he  was  in  any  way  to  be  ranked  with  their 
public  men  —  such  as  Lord  Brougham,  for 
instance.  "  The  fact  is,"  he  adds,  "no  interest 
is  felt  in  America  or  American  institutions 
among  the  European  public.  America  is  as 
isolated  as  China.  Nobody  knows  or  cares  any 
thing  about  its  men,  or  its  politics,  or  its  condi 
tions.  It  is,  however,  known  and  felt  among 
the  lower  classes  that  it  is  a  place  to  get  to  out 

1  Correspondence,  i.  125. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   AN   AMERICAN      225 

of  the  monotonous  prison-house  of  Philistines, 
in  which  the  great  unwashed  of  Europe  continue 
to  grind  eternally.  Very  little  is  known  of  the 
country,  and  very  little  respect  is  felt  for  it ;  but 
the  fact  remains  that  Europe  is  decanting  itself 
into  America  a  great  deal  more  rapidly  than  is 
to  be  wished  by  us."' 1 

While  trying  to  work  away  on  his  history 
Motley  found  himself  absorbed  not  only  in  our 
great  conflict,  which  made  European  politics 
seem  i;  pale  and  uninteresting/'  but  in  the 
extraordinary  way  in  which  it  set  at  naught  all 
European  traditions.  *•  All  European  ideas  are 
turned  upside  down  by  the  mere  statement  of 
the  proposition^ which  is  at  the  bottom  of  our 
war.  Hitherto  4the  sovereignty  of  the  people' 
has  been  heard  in  Europe,  and  smiled  at  as  a 
fiction.  .  .  .  But  now  here  comes  rebellion 
against  our  idea  of  sovereignty,  and  fact  on  a 
large  scale  is  illustrating  our  theoretic  fiction."2 
In  the  next  letter  he  uses  that  fine  phrase  which 
illustrates  so  much  in  our/  early  struggles  and 
difficulties  through  that  contest :  "  It  is  not  a 
military  war,  if  such  a  contradiction  can  be 

1  Correspondence,  i.  147.  2  Ibid.,  ii.  79. 


226   THE   NEW  WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

used.  It  is  a  great  political  and  moral  revolu 
tion,  and  we  are  in  the  first  stage*  of  it."  l  This 
was  the  period  of  which  the  English  Hayward 
wrote,  —  the  translator  of  "  Faust,"  —  "I  passed 
a  day  with  the  Motleys  at  their  villa,  and  found 
him  more  unreasonable  than  ever,  vowing  that 
the  restoration  of  the  Union  in  its  entirety  was 
as  sure  as  the  sun  in  heaven."  It  was  the 
period  of  which  Motley  himself  afterward  wrote, 
"  All  English  '  society,'  except  half  a  dozen 
individuals,  was  then  entirely  Southern." 

It  was,  in  short,  the  opening  of  that  period  of 
cleavage  between  the  English  and  American 
literary  classes  which  still  bears  its  fruit  in  the 
habits  of  mind  of  this  generation,  and  will 
never  be  forgotten  till  a  new  generation  has 
wholly  taken  its  place.  The  fact  that  the 
literary  class  especially,  which  in  other  coun 
tries  is  usually  found  on  the  side  of  progress, 
in  this  case  echoed  all  the  sympathies  of  the 
people  of  rank,  and  left  only  the  workingmen 
of  England,  with  a  few  illustrious  exceptions, 
to  be  our  friends  —  this  it  was  that  made  Motley 
not  merely  a  patriot,  but  a  man  of  democratic 

1  Correspondence,  ii.  82. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   AN   AMERICAN       227 

convictions  at  last.  In  1862  he  wrote,  "  I  am 
so  much  of  a  democrat ;  far  more  than  I  ever 
was  before  in  my  life."  l  Two  years  later  he 
-writes,  —  this  man  of  experience  in  many  courts, 
— "  For  one.  I  like  democracy.  I  don't  say 
that  it  is  pretty,  or  genteel,  or  jolly.  But  it 
has  a  reason  for  existing,  and  is  a  fact  in 
America,  and  is  founded  on  the  immutable 
principles  of  reason  and  justice.  Aristocracy 
certainly  presents  more  brilliant  social  phe 
nomena,  more  luxurious  social  enjoyments. 
Such  a  system  is  very  cheerful  for  a  few  thou 
sand  select  specimens  out  of  the  few  hundred 
millions  of  the  human  race  .  .  .  but  what  a 
price  is  paid  for  it ! " 2  When  he  wrote  this, 
the  evolution  of  an  American  was  complete. 
Who  can  doubt  that  if  Motley  had  lived  till 
now  he  would  have  approached  the  new  and 
even  profounder  problems  developed  by  another 
quarter  of  a  century  with  the  equipoise  and 
the  fearlessness  that  an  American  should  show  ? 

1  Correspondence,  ii.  77.  -  Ibid.,  ii.  193. 


228  THE  NEW  WORLD  AND  THE  NEW  BOOK 

XXVIII 
A   WORLD-LITERATURE 

TN  Eckermann's  "  Conversations  with  Goethe  " 
that  poet  is  represented  as  having  said,  in 
January,  1827,  that  the  time  for  separate 
national  literatures  had  gone  by.  "National 
literature,"  he  said,  "is  now  a  rather  unmean 
ing  phrase  (will  jetzt  nicht  viel  sageri)  ;  the 
epoch  of  world-literature  is  at  hand  (die  Epoche 
der  Welt-Liter  atur  ist  an  der  Zeit),  and  each  one 
must  do  what  he  can  to  hasten  its  approach." 
Then  he  points  out  that  it  will  not  be  safe  to 
select  any  one  literature  as  affording  a  pattern 
or  model  (musterhaffy  ;  or  that,  if  it  is,  this 
model  must  necessarily  be  the  Greek.  All  the 
rest,  he  thought,  must  be  looked  at  historically, 
we  appropriating  from  each  the  best  that  can  be 
employed. 

If  this  world-literature  be  really  the  ultimate 
aim,  it  is  something  to  know  that  we  are  at 
least  getting  so  far  as  to  interchange  freely  our 
national  models.  The  current  London  litera- 


A   WORLD-LITERATURE  229 

ture  is  French  in  its  forms  and  often  in  its 
frivolity ;  while  the  French  critics  have  lately 
discovered  Jane  Austen,  and  are  trying  to  find 
in  that  staid  and  exemplary  lady  the  founder  of 
the  realistic  school,  and  the  precursor  of  Zola. 
Among  contemporary  novelists,  Mr.  Howells 
places  the  Russian  first,  then  the  Spanish  ;  rank 
ing  the  English,  and  even  the  French,  far  lower. 
He  is  also  said,  in  a  recent  interview,  to  have 
attributed  his  own  style  largely  to  the  influence 
of  Heine.  But  Heine  himself,  in  the  preface 
to  his  "  Deutechland,"  names  as  his  own  especial 
models  Aristophanes.  Cervantes,  and  Moliere 
—  a  Greek,  a  Spaniard,  and  a  Frenchman. 
Goethe  himself  thinks  that  we  cannot  compre 
hend  Calderon  without  Hafiz,  — 

"Nur  vver  Hafis  liebt  imd  kennt 
Weiss  was  Calderon  gesungen.  —  " 

and  Fitzgerald,  following  this  suggestion  almost 
literally,  translated  Calderon  first,  and  then 
Omar  Khayyam.  Surely,  one  might  infer,  the 
era  of  a  world-literature  must  be  approaching. 

Yet  in  looking   over   the    schedules    of   our 
American  universities,  one  finds  as  little  refer- 


230   THE   NEW   WORLD    AND   THE  NEW   BOOK 

ence  to  a  coming  world-literature  as  if  no  one 
had  hinted  at  the  dream.  There  is  an  immense 
increase  of  interest  in  the  study  of  languages, 
no  doubt;  and  all  this  prepares  for  an  inter 
change  of  national  literatures,  not  for  merging 
them  in  one.  The  interchange  is  a  good  pre 
liminary  stage,  no  doubt;  but  the  preparation 
for  a  world-literature  must  surely  lie  in  the 
study  of  those  methods  of  thought,  those  canons 
of  literary  art,  which  lie  at  the  foundation  of 
all  literatures.  The  thought  and  its  expression, 
—  these  are  the  two  factors  which  must  solve 
the  problem ;  and  it  matters  not  how  much  we 
translate  —  or  overset,  as  the  Germans  felici 
tously  say  —  so  long  as  we  go  no  deeper  and 
do  not  grasp  at  what  all  literatures  have  in 
common.  Thus  in  the  immense  range  of 
elective  studies  at  Harvard  University  there 
are  twenty-one  distinct  courses  in  Greek,  and 
about  as  many  in  Latin,  English,  French,  and 
German ;  but  not  a  single  course  among  them 
which  pertains  to  a  world-literature,  or  even 
recognizes  that  these  various  branches  have 
any  common  trunk.  The  only  sign  that  looks 
in  the  slightest  degree  toward  this  direction  is 


A   WORLD-LITERATURE  231 

the  recent  appointment  of  my  accomplished 
friend,  Mr.  Arthur  Richmond  Marsh,  as  pro 
fessor  of  Comparative  Literature. 

No  study  seems  to  me  to  hold  less  place  in 
our  universities,  as  a  rule,  than  that  of  litera 
ture  viewed  in  any  respect  as  an  art ;  all  tends 
to  the  treatment  of  it  as  a  department  of  philol 
ogy  on  the  one  side,  or  of  history  on  the  other ; 
and  even  where  it  is  studied,  and  training  is 
really  given  in  it,  it  is  almost  always  a  training 
that  begins  and  ends  with  English  tradition 
and  method.  It  may  call  itself  "  Rhetoric  and 
English  Composition,"  but  the  one  of  these  sub 
divisions  is  as  essentially  English  as  the  other. 
It  not  only  recognizes  the  English  language  as 
the  vehicle  to  be  used,  —  winch  is  inevitable, 
—  but  it  does  not  go  behind  the  English  for 
its  methods,  standards,  or  illustrations.  That 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  training  in  thought  and 
literary  expression,  quite  apart  from  all  national 
limitations  —  this  may  be  recognized  here  and 
there  in  the  practice  of  our  colleges,  but  very 
rarely  in  their  framework  and  avowed  method. 

And,  strange  to  say,  this  deficiency,  if  it  be 
one,  has  only  been  increased  by  the  increased 


232   THE   NEW    WORLD   AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

differentiation  and  specialization  of  our  higher 
institutions.  Whatever  the  evils  of  the  old 
classical  curriculum,  it  had  at  least  this  merit, 
that  it  included  definite  instruction  in  the  fun 
damental  principles  of  literature  as  literature. 
So  long  as  young  men  used  to  read  Quintilian 
and  Aristotle,  although  they  may  have  missed 
much  that  was  more  important,  they  retained 
the  conception  of  a  literary  discipline  that  went 
behind  all  nationalities ;  that  was  neither  an 
cient  nor  modern,  but  universal.  I  heartily 
believe,  for  one,  in  the  introduction  of  the 
modern  elective  system ;  what  I  regret  is  that, 
in  this  general  breaking-up  and  rearranging, 
the  preparation  for  a  world-literature  has  been 
so  neglected.  If  Goethe's  view  is  correct,  — 
and  who  stands  for  the  modern  world  if  Goethe 
does  not?  —  then  no  one  is  fitted  to  give  the 
higher  literary  training  in  our  colleges  who  has 
not  had  some  training  in  world-literature  for 
himself,  who  does  not  know  something  of 
Calderon  through  knowing  something  of  Hafiz. 
And  observe  that  Goethe  himself  is  com 
pelled  to  recognize  the  fact  that  in  this  world- 
literature,  whether  we  will  or  no,  wre  must 


A   WORLD-LITERATURE  233 

recognize  the  exceptional  position  of  the  Greek 
product.  In  this  respect  "we  are  not  con 
fronted  by  a  theory,  but  by  a  condition."  The 
supremacy  of  the  Greek  in  sculpture  is  not 
more  unequivocal  than  in  literature ;  and  the 
two  arts  had  this  in  common,  that  the  very 
language  of  that  race  had  the  texture  of  marble. 
To  treat  this  supremacy  as  something  acci 
dental,  like  the  long  theologic  sway  of  the 
Hebrew  and  Chaldee,  is  to  look  away  from  a 
world-literature.  It  is  as  if  an  ambitious  sculp 
tor  were  to  decide  to  improve  his  studio  by 
throwing  his  Venus  of  Milo  upon  the  ash-heap. 
There  is  no  accident  about  art:  what  is  great 
is  great,  and  the  best  cannot  be  permanently 
obscured  by  the  second  best. 

At  the  recent  sessions  of  the  "  Modern  Lan 
guage  Association,"  in  Cambridge,  Mass.,  al 
though  all  the  discussions  were  spirited  and 
pointed,  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  inaturest 
and  best  talk  came  from  those  who  showed  that 
they  had  not  been  trained  in  the  modern  lan 
guages  alone.  The  collective  literature  of  the 
world  is  not  too  wide  a  study  to  afford  the 
requisite  foundation  for  an  ultimate  world-lit- 


234   THE   NEW   WORLD  AND   THE   NEW   BOOK 

erature ;  and  surely  the  nations  which  have 
brought  their  product  to  the  highest  external 
perfection  need  to  be  studied  the  most.  It 
seems  safe  to  rest  on  two  propositions  which 
seem  irrefutable :  first,  that  all  advances  towards 
a  world-literature  must  be  based  on  principles 
which  have  formed  the  foundation  of  every 
detached  literature ;  and  secondly,  that  these 
principles  are  something  apart  from  the  laws  of 
science  or  invention  or  business,  and  not  less 
worthy  than  these  of  life-long  study.  It  was 
the  supremely  practical  Napoleon  Bonaparte 
who  placed  literature  above  science,  as  contain 
ing  above  all  things  the  essence  of  human  intel 
lect.  "J'aime  les  sciences  mathematiques  et 
physiques  ;  chacune  d'elles  est  une  belle  applica 
tion  partielle  de  T esprit  humain  ;  mais  les  lettres, 
c'est  V esprit  humain  lui-meme  ;  cest  V education 
de  Vdme" 


INDEX 


A. 

ABOUT,  Edmond,  82. 

Addison,  Joseph,  119,  196. 

.Eschylus,  16,  99,  171. 

Agassiz,  Louis,  177. 

Aiusworth,  W.  H.,  94. 

Albert,  Prince,  28. 

Albion  newspaper,  the,  64. 

Aldrich,  T.  B.,  67,  102. 

Alford,  Henry,  57,  94. 

American,  an,  evolution  of,  221. 

American  Civil  War,  literary  in 
fluence  of,  65. 

American  press,  as  viewed  by 
Irving,  2. 

Americanism,  English  standard 
of,  20. 

Andersen,  H.  C.,  214. 

Anglomania,  origin  of,  64. 

Anti-slavery  agitation,  literary 
influence,  of,  66. 

Apologies,  unnecessary,  120. 

Archer,  the  jockey,  205. 

Ariosto,  Lodovico,  187. 

Arisfophaues,  99,  229. 

Aristotle,  174,  232. 

Arnold,  -Sir  Edwin,  106,  110. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  3,  5,  19,  20,  21, 
22,  35,  38,  46,  91,  123,  195,  206, 
208. 

Austen,  Jane,  10,  15,  219,  229. 

Austin,  Henry,  101. 

Austin,  Sarah,  144. 

B. 

Background,  the  need  of  a,  113. 
Bacon,  Lord.  114,  175. 
Bailey,  P.  J.,  57. 
Bain,  Alexander,  202. 
Balzac,  H.  de,  114. 
Bancroft,  George,  107,  155. 
Bancroft,  H.  H.,  172. 
Barker,  Lemuel,  184. 
Bartlett,  J.  R.,  216. 


Beaconsfield,  Lord,  110,  167,  179, 

180. 

Beecher,  H.  W.,  60. 
Besant,  Walter,  74. 
"  Bigelow,"  54. 
Billings,  Josh,  59. 
Black,  William,  202. 
Blaine,  J.  G.,  110. 
Blake,  William,  218. 
Bonaparte,  Napoleon,  28,  52,  109, 

188,  234. 
Book  catalogue,  a  Westminster 

Abbey,  Io2. 

Boston,  the,  of  Emerson's  day,  62. 
lioyesen,  H.  H.,  144,  171. 
Bremer,  Fredrika,  57. 
Bridaine,  Jacques,  215. 
Brougham,  Henry,  224. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  51. 
Brown,  John,  16,  155. 
Brown,  J.  Browulee,  104. 
Browning,  Robert,  25,  54,  55,  98, 

196. 

Bryant,  W.  C.,  100,  147. 
Bryce,  James,  120,  167,  211. 
Bulwer,  see  Lytton. 
Buntline,  Xed,  199,200. 
Burroughs,  John,  114. 
Burton,  Robert,  114. 
Byron,  Lord,  178,  195,  217. 

C. 

Cable,  G.  W.,  11,  67. 
Cabot,  J.  E.,  175. 
Calderon,  Seratin,  229,  232. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  37,  56,  197,  206, 

217. 

Casanova,  Jacques,  41. 
Catullus,  99. 

Cervantes,  Miguel  de,  229. 
Champlain,  Samuel  de,  192. 
Channing,  E.  T.,  94 
Channing,  Walter,  214. 
Chaninng,  W.  E.,  46,  66,  155. 
Channing,  W.E.  (of  Concord) ,  103. 


235 


236 


INDEX 


Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  179. 

Cherbuliez,  Victor,  79. 

Chapelain,  J.,  91. 

Chaplin,  H.  W.,  76. 

Chicago  Anarchists,  the,  68. 

Choate,  Rufus,  213. 

Cicero,  M.  T.,  4,  13, 16,  171. 

City  life,  limitations  of,  80. 

Claverhouse,  Earl  of,  47. 

Clemens,  S.  H.,  29,  57. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  110. 

Cobb,  Sylvanus,  199,  200. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  197,  215,  217. 

College  education,  value  of,  113. 

Comte,  Auguste,  32. 

Contemporaneous  posterity,  a,  51. 

Conway,  M.  D.,  31. 

Cooper,  J.  F.,58,62,  155. 

Corneille,  Pierre,  92. 

Cosmopolitan  standard,  a,  43. 

Coster,  John,  6. 

Court  of  England  not  sought  by 
literary  men,  74. 

Cousin,  Victor,  216. 

Creighton,  Dr.,  34. 

Cruger,  Mrs.  Julie  (Julien  Gor 
don),  11. 

Crusoe,  .Robinson,  17. 

D. 

Dante,  Alighieri,  48, 114,  185,  186, 
187,  189,  196. 

Darwin,  C.  R.,  29,  49, 124, 125,  137, 
176,  187. 

Dead  level,  the  fear  of  the,  70. 

Declaration  of  independence,  ap 
plied  to  literature,  4. 

Delphic  oracle,  answer  of,  to 
Cicero,  4. 

Demosthenes,  69. 

Descartes,  Rene",  71. 

Dickens,  Charles,  12,  93,  183,  184, 
206. 

Dickinson,  Emily,  16. 

Digby,  K.  H.,  116. 

Donnelly,  Ignatius,  175. 

Dime  novel,  the  test  of  the,  198. 

Disraeli,  Benj.,  see  Beaconsfield. 

Drake,  Nathan,  187. 

Dryden,  John,  195. 

Dukes,  acceptance  of,  12. 

Doyle,  J.  A.,  33. 


Eckermann,  J.  P.,  97,  188,  228. 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  155. 
Eggleston,  Edward,  11. 
Equation  of  fame,  the,  88. 


Eliot,  Charles,  174. 

Eliot,  George,  200. 

Elliot,  Sir  Frederick,  78,  167. 

Emerson,  K.  W.,  7,  15,  27,  36,  39, 

42,  46,  49,  54,  63,  66,  71,92,  100, 

114,  123,  124,  126,  155,  173,  175. 

191,  195,  197,  208,  217,  221. 
English  criticism  on  America,  24. 
English  society,  influence  of,  on 

literature  204,  205. 
Europe,  the  shadow  of,  27. 
Evolution,  the,  of  an  American, 

221. 

Everett,  Edward,  51, 155. 
Ewing,  Juliana,  203. 

F. 

Faber,  F.  W.,  94. 
Fame,  the  equation  of,  88. 
Farmers,  American,  75. 
Felton,  C.  C.,  90,  174. 
Fields,  J.  T.,  51. 
Firdousi,  186. 
Fiske,  Willard,  172, 185. 
Fitzgerald,  P.  H.,  229. 
Fontenelle,  Bernard  de,  86. 
Fuller,  M.  F.,  see  Ossoli. 
Fuller,  Thomas,  93. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  5,  63,  155. 
Francis,  Philip,  190. 
Frederick  II.,  83. 
Freeman,  E.  A.,  168. 
Froude,  J.  A.,  116,  158,  203. 

G. 

Garfield,  J.  A.,  111. 
Garrison,  W.  L.,  49,  62. 
George  IV.,  111. 
Giants,  concerning,  185. 
Gilder,  R.  W.,  113. 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  110,  167. 
Goethe,  J.  W.,  6,  17,  48,  66,  90,  97, 
179,  182,  188,  189,  228,  229,  233. 
Goodale,  G.  H.,  163. 
Gosse,  E.  W.,  123,  195, 
Gordon,  Julien,  see  Cruger. 
Grant,  U.  S.,  84,  123,  155. 
Greeley,  Horace,  27. 

H. 

Hafiz,  M.  S.,  229,  232. 

Haggard,  Rider,  14,  93,  197,    198, 

202,  205. 

Hale,  E.  E.,  101. 
Hamerton,  P.  G.,  168. 
Hardenberg,  Friedrich  von,  99. 
Hardy,  A.  S.,  15,  202. 
Haring,  John,  6. 


INDEX 


237 


Harte,  Bret,  11,57,58. 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  9,  41,  66, 

S4.  124,  126,  155,  218,  219. 
Hayley,  William,  217,  218. 
Hayward  Memoirs,  the,  82,  226. 
Hazlitt,  William,  21<>. 
Heine,  Heiurich,  90,  109,  142,  159, 

189,  229. 

Hemaus,  F.  D.,  179. 
High-water   marks,    concerning, 

97. 

Hogg,  James,  169. 
Holmes,  O.  W.,  54,  62,  67,  97,  99, 

178,  205. 

Holt,  Henry,  172. 
Homer,  48/98,  114,  169,  171,  190, 

217. 

Horace,  16,  48,  99,  114. 
Houghton,  Lord,  19,  56.  62,  94. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  13,  15,  66,  114, 

118,  171,  184,  194,  201,  202,  210, 

229. 

Howe,  E.  W.,  11. 
Howe,  Julia  Ward,  67,  100. 
Hugo,  Victor,  49,  56,  68,  110. 
Humboldt,  A.  yon,  73,  176. 
Humor,  American,  perils  of,  128. 
Hutchinsou,  Ellen  M.,  101,  102. 
Huxley,  T.  H.,  137,  158. 

I. 

Ideals,  personal,  106. 
Iffland,  A.W.,  90. 
International  copyright  law,  122. 
Irving,  Washington,  1,  2,  3,  4,  6, 
20,  64,  216. 


J. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  110. 
Jackson,  Helen,  68,  102. 
James,  G.  P.  R.,94. 
•James,  Henry,  65,  66,  84,  114,  118, 

184. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  4,  5,  11,  110, 

155. 

Johnson.  Samuel,  197. 
Joubert,  Joseph,  26,  96,  194,  195. 
Jouffroy,  T.  S.,  216. 
Junius,  190. 

K. 

Keats,  John,  86,  103. 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  15. 
Kock.  Paul  de,  56. 
Kotzebue,  A.  F.  von,  90. 
Khayyam,  Omar,  229. 


Lafontaine,  A.  90. 

La  Fontaine,  J.  de,  92. 

Lamartine,  Alphonse,  182. 

Lamb,  Charles,  217. 

Landor,  W.  S.,  69,  197,  217. 

Lang,  Andrew,  41,  199. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  67. 

Lapham,  Silas,  164,  1>4. 

Larousse,  Pierre,  54. 

Lawton,  W.  C.,  147. 

Leland,  C.  G.,  151. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  4,  16,67,  84, 

155. 

Literary  metropolis,  A,  77. 
,    Literary  pendulum,  The,  213. 
Literary  tonics,  62. 
Liveries,  repressive,  75. 
London,  the,  of  to-day,  80,  93. 
Longfellow,  H.  W.,  29,  39,  66,  81, 

93,  100,  155,  215. 
Lougueville,  Duchesse  de,  91. 
;    Lowell,  J.  R.,  19,  54,  59,  63,  66,  77, 

96,  98,  100,  102,  114,   155,  179, 

205. 

Lubbock,  James,  217. 
Lytton,  Lord,  179,  180,  181.  182. 


M. 


Macaulay,  T.  B.,  25,  197. 
Madonnas,     Emily    Dickinson's 

definition  of,  16. 
3Iaiue,  Sir  Henry,  5,  32. 
"  Make  thv  optio'n  which  of  two," 

170.     ' 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  52. 
Martel,  Charles,  209. 
Mason,  William,  218. 
Matthews,  Brander,  12. 
Maturin,  C.  R.,  51. 
McCosh,  James,  111. 
Meuzel.  C.  A.,90. 
Metropolis,  a  literary,  77. 
Millais,  J.  E.,53. 
Miller,  Joaquin,  20. 
Millet,  J.  F.,  53. 
Milnes,  see  Houghtou. 
Mohammed,  109,  223. 
Mohammed  and  Bonaparte,  109. 
3Ioliere,  J.  B.  P.  de,  92,  186,  229. 
Montagu,  Elizabeth.  52. 
Moore,  Thomas,  178,  179. 
Morgan,  Lady,  59. 
Morlev,  John,  167. 
Morris,  William,  68. 
Motley,  J.  L.,  2,  6,  7,  36,  59,  60, 

221. 


238 


INDEX 


Motley,  Preble,  222. 
Mozart,  W.  A.,  188. 
Mliller,  Max,  171. 
Murfree,  Mary  N.,  11,  58. 


Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  125. 

Newton,  Stuart,  49. 

New  World  and  New  Book,  the,  1. 

Nichol,  John,  61. 

Niebuhr,  B.  G.,  4. 

Novalis,  see  Hardenberg. 

Norton,  C.  E.,  179,  180,  208. 


Ossoli,  Margaret  Fuller,  9,  27,  90, 

96,  155,  176. 
Ossian,  52. 

Osten-Sacken,  Baron,  173. 
Oxenstiern,  Chancellor,  89. 


Palmer,  G.  H.,  148. 
Paris,  limitations  of,  82. 
Paris,  the  world's  capital,  77. 
Parker,  Theodore,  42,  62,  115, 
Parkman,  Francis,  60,  61. 
Parton,  James,  13. 
Pattison,  Mark,  50. 
Paul,  Jean,  see  Richter. 
Pepys,  Samuel,  42. 
Perry,  Lillah  Cabot,  219, 
Petrarch,    Francesco,     172, 

185,  186,  187. 
Philip  of  Burgundy,  6. 
Phillips,  Wendell,   7,  49,  62, 

222. 

Plato,  48,  114. 
Plot,  the  proposed  abolition 

135. 

Plutarch,  4, 174. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  66,  155,190,219. 
Popkin,  J.  S.,  117,  169,  171, 

174. 

Posterity,  a  contemporaneous 
Precision,  weapons  of,  192. 
Prescott,  W.  H.,  59. 

Q- 

Quincy,  Edmund,  22. 
Quintilian,  232. 


Racine,  Jean,  92. 
Ramler,  C.  W.,  90. 
Raphael  da  Urbino,  188. 
Rainsford,  W.  S.,  79. 


155. 

179, 

221, 
Of, 


Richter,  J.  P.  F.,  182. 
Rollo  Books,  the,  180. 
Roscoe,  William,  216. 
Russell,  W.  Clark,  202. 
Ruskin,  John,  53,  97,  114,  187  197, 

200. 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  179. 


Sala,  G.  A.,  203. 

Sand,  George,  56. 

Scherer,  Edmond,  5. 

Schiller,  J.  C.  F.  von,  90,  179,  189. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  10,  15,  46,  94. 

Scudder,  S.  H.,  73. 

Self-depreciation,    the    trick    of, 

206. 

Sentimental,  decline  of  the,  178. 
Seward,  Anna,  218. 
Shadow  of  Europe,  the,  27. 
Shakespeare,  William,  16,  21,  48, 

52,  186,  188,  181),  191. 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  190. 
Sheridan,  I1.  H.,  47,  123. 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  83. 
Slavery,  Emerson's  poem  on,  8. 
Sly,  Christopher,  213. 
Smith,  Goldwin,  3. 
Southey,  Robert,  217. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  216. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  18,  83,  94. 
Spoflbrd,  Harrietl'.,  102. 
Stackpole,  J.  L.,  222. 
Stedrnan,  E.  C.,  62,  67,  100. 
Sterling,  John,  56,94. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  65. 
St.  Nicholas  magazine,  riddles  in, 

23. 

Stockton,  F.  R.,  219. 
Stoddard,  R.  H.,  67. 
Stowe,  H.  B.,  57,  58,  66,  68. 
Sumner,  Charles,  70,  155. 
Sumner,  W.  G.,  19. 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  68, 158. 

T. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  53. 

Taking  ourselves    seriously,  on, 

35. 

Talleyrand,  C.  M.,  193. 
Tasso,  Torquato,  187,  217. 
Taylor,  Bayard,  67,  100. 
Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  78,  167. 
Taylor,  Thomas,  215. 
Temperament,  an  American,  2. 
Tennyson,  Lord,  25,  29,  53,  56,  94, 

95,  98,  124,  126,  184,    196,  203, 

205. 


INDEX 


239 


Test  of  the  dime  novel,  the,  198. 
Thackeray,  W.  M.,  «3,  111. 
Thomas,  Isaiah,  12. 
Thompson,  Maurice,  67. 
Thoreau,  H.  D.,  vi.,'9,  16,  73,  90, 

114,  155,  175,  220. 
Ticknor,  George,  19. 
Tocqueville,  A.  C.  H.  de,  32,  121. 
Tolstoi,  Count  Leo,  35. 
Tonics,  literary,  62. 
Touchstone  quoted,  '-'I. 
Tourguenett',  Ivan,  219. 
Town  and  gown,  161. 
Tracy,  Uriah,  46. 
Transcendental  school,  the,  8. 
Translators,  American,  144. 
Travers,  W.  R.,  82. 
Trench,  R.  C.,  57. 
Trollope,  Frances,  24. 
Tupper,  M.  F.,  98. 
Twain,  Mark,  see  Clemens. 
Tyndall,  John,  22. 

U,  V. 

Urquhart,  David,  208,  209. 

Vestris,  M.,83. 

Virgil,  99,  171,  217. 

Voltaire,  F.  M.  A.  de,  52,  53,  83, 

187,  189 
Von  Hoist,  H.  E.,  32. 

W. 

Wagner,  Richard,  16. 
Wallace,  H.  B.,  51. 


Wallace,  Lew,  67. 
Walpule,  Horace,  135,  210. 
Walton,  Izaak,  202. 
Walworth,  M.  T.,  198,  200. 
Ward,  Artemus,  59. 
Warner,  C.  D.,  2.  72. 
Washington,  George,  112,  155. 
Wasson,  D.  A.,  v.,  103. 
Weapons  of  precision,  192. 
Webb,  R.  D.,  29. 
Webster,  Daniel,  155,  224. 
Weiss,  John,  104. 
Weller,  Sam.  Iv.'. 
Westminster  Abbey  of   a  book 

catalogue,  152. 
White,  J.  Blanco,  98. 
Whitman,  Walt,  58,  <i7,  100. 
Whittier,  J.  G.,  25,  60,  62,  66. 
Wieland.  C.  M.,  90. 
Wilde,  Oscar,  93. 
William  the  Silent,  6. 
Willis,  X.  P.,  27,  28,  29,  93. 
Wilkins,  Mary  E.,  11. 
Winsor,  Justin,  172. 
Wolfe,  General,  103. 
Wolseley,  Lord,  123. 
Wordsworth,  William,  94,  217. 
World-literature,  a,  228. 


Zelter,  C.  F.,  ^7. 
Zincke,  Canon,  39. 
Zola,  Emile,  56,  229. 


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BE  WRITTEN 


Language 


NEATLY  BOUND  IN  CLOTH,  50  CENTS  EACH. 

MISTAKES  IN  WRITING  ENGLISH  AND  HOW  TO  AVOID  THEM 

For  the  use  of  all  who  teach,  write,  or  speak  the  language.  By  MARSHALL 
T.  BIGELOW,  author  of  "Punctuation." 

PUNCTUATION  AND  OTHER  TYPOGRAPHICAL  MATTERS 

For  the  use  of  Printers,  Authors,  Teachers  and  Scholars.  By  MARSHALL 
T.  BIGELOW,  Corrector  at  the  University  Press,  Cambridge. 

1000  BLUNDERS  IN  ENGLISH 

A  Handbook  of  Suggestions  in  Reading  and  Speaking.  ByHARLAN  H. 
BALLARD,  A.  M.,  Principal  of  Lenox  Academy,  Lenox,  Mass. 

HANDBOOK  OF  CONVERSATION 

Its  Faults  and  its  Graces.  Compiled  by  ANDREW  P.  PEABODY,  D.D., 
LL.D.  Containing  Dr.  Peabody's  Address,  Mr.  Trench's  Lecture, 
Mr.  Parry  Gwynne's  "A  Word  to  the  Wise,"  and  "  Mistakes  and 
Improprieties  of  Reading  and  Writing  Corrected." 

ENGLISH  SYNONYMS  DISCRIMINATED 

By  Rev.  RICHARD  WHATELY,  D.D.,  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin. 

SOULE  ^  CAMPBELL'S  PRONOUNCING  HANDBOOK 

Of  Words  often  mispronounced,  and  of  words  as  to  which  a  Choice  of 
Pronunciation  is  allowed.  3,000  mistakes  in  Pronunciation  corrected. 

CAMPBELL'S  HANDBOOK  OF  ENGLISH  SYNONYMS 

With  an  Appendix  showing  the  Correct  Uses  of  Prepositions. 

HINTS  ON  LANGUAGE 

In  connection  with  Sight  Reading  and  Writing  in  Primary  and  Inter 
mediate  Schools.  By  S.  ARTHUR  BENT,  A.M. 

FORGOTTEN  MEANINGS 

Or,  An  Hour  with  the  Dictionary.  By  ALFRED  WAITES,  author  of 
"  Student's  Historical  Manual." 

SHORT  STUDIES  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS 

By  THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON,  author  of  "Young  Folks'  History 
of  the  United  States,"  "  Outdoor  Papers,"  etc. 

HINTS  ON  WRITING  AND  SPEECH-MAKING 

By  THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON. 

UNIVERSAL  PHONOGRAPHY 

Or,  Shorthand  by  the  "  Allen  Method."  Self  instructive.  By  G.  G. 
ALLEN,  Principal  of  the  Allen  Stenographic  Institute,  Boston. 

PENS  AND  TYPES;  or  Hints  and  Helps.     New  edition,  $1  25 

For  those  who  write,  print,  read,  teach,  or  learn.     BY  BENJAMIN  DREW. 

Sold  by  all  booksellers,  and  sent  by  mail,  postpaid,  on  receipt 
of  price 

LEE    AND    SHEPARD    PUBLISHERS    BOSTON 


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